The Curve Of Her Lips
by ohyellowbird
Summary: When Tate Langdon escaped his old neighborhood for Hollywood and fame, he thought he'd never go back. Now, seventeen years later, visiting his mother to plan Adelaide's funeral, he meets a girl that begs the question: Could he ever leave?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Hello all! I am super excited to announce that **ScarlettWoman710** and myself are collaborating on this fic. I've been craving an age difference AU for a while and ScarWo was kind enough to suggest working together! So here's the prologue to our multi-chapter fic which will be rated M in later chapters.

Warning: Yes, you read right. Thirty-four-year-old Tate is going to get it on with seventeen-year-old Violet. And yeah, it's taboo. But if there can be 32,000 (yeah I looked) fics about Bella getting it on with Edward, a dude 100 years her senior, then we can write this AU. If anyone has any problems with their age difference, we won't take offense if you decide to sit this fic out.

Anyway! Here's a teeny-tiny taste for what's to come.

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><p><em>"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."<em>

_-Oscar WIlde_

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><p>A soft breeze plays through the open windows as Tate's blinker sounds and he rolls into his old neighborhood.<p>

It hadn't changed a stitch, each house painted just the same with neatly trimmed lawns and foreboding wrought iron fences.

Twins he used to babysit, Bryan and Troy, are piling baseball gear into the back of an old Chevy truck and speeding off down the road dressed in pin-striped pants and UCLA jerseys. Shit, they hadn't been more than eight or ten the last time he'd seen them, a pair of surly gradeschoolers then with a penchant for foul language and property damage.

When all he can see of them is a plume of exhaust smoke, he turns his attention to the other side of the street, to the first home he'd ever lived in as it comes into view on the right.

He tries to smother the bouquet of bad memories that lurch to the forefront of his mind and appraises the L.A. Victorian. It's been renovated in the last few years. The brick had been scrubbed clean. The windows were no longer missing or cracked. It was being lived in again, loved.

There are two vehicles in the driveway, a sleek foreign car that makes Tate wonder what the owners do for a living and your standard minivan, but his attention falls away from everything tucked behind the front gates when he notices the car in the street, or more precisely, the young girl flouncing around the rusted hunk of metal.

Scrubbing down a shoddy old Cadillac in a cropped band tee and bathing suit bottoms, a cigarette in one hand and a sudsy sponge in the other, is a girl the likes of which Tate's never seen on the red carpet or at a record release party, the kind of girl he was starting to think didn't exist in the filth of Hollywood anymore.

She's got an old school boombox balanced on the hood that's stuffed with two cassette tapes, their empty cases snapped shut and piled at her feet.

When he gets close enough, he can hear that it's the Scissor Sisters she's mouthing the words to and can't help but note the curve of her lips and that they look nice around the phrase 'sex and violence.' Then she's turning her head and looking at him over the top of her appropriately heart-shaped sunglasses and, is that a welcoming smile on her face or just a smirk that means 'haha caught you, pervert'? Either way, unusually flustered, he quickly turns back to the road just in time to scarcely avoid running down his mother's recycling can and whips into her driveway.

"Is that my movie star?" A voice laced in southern twang squeals moments later, the screen door swinging open to reveal his mother, dressed smart save for the ridiculous string of pearls cinched around her neck. Constance bustles down the porch as Tate tears his gaze from the rear-view mirror and unfolds from the car, enveloping him in a hug before he can step out of her impending embrace.

"It's so good to have you home," she sighs, drawing back only when he drops his hands. "Now straighten up and lemme get a look at you."

He squints up at the sun to keep from rolling his eyes, but holds still nonetheless.

She smoothes her palms up his chest and shoulders, plucking at a stray hair on the collar of his t-shirt, dusting at the material over his collarbones.

"Are you getting enough to eat? They're not starving you, are they? I don't want you turning out like the kids I've seen on the television, just skin and bones!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Tate groans, side-stepping Constance's dithering to climb the steps into the house.

He's thirty-four and she dotes on him more now than she ever had as a boy. Then again, he wasn't worth eight figures and his face wasn't slapped across magazine covers at six years old.

When the screen door clatters shut with a whine that begs for its hinges to be oiled, there's a pair of pale hands parting the hedges for soft brown eyes to peek through and watch as the blond man with slumped broad shoulders disappears inside.

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><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for sticking it out for those 600 words. If you're still hungry for an age difference AU and can't wait for an update, I'd like to point everyone over to **Holding A Heart**'s in-progress fic, 'I Used To Live Here'. Looks very promising!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Hey guys! In celebration of the news that Evan Peters will be back for Season 2 of American Horror Story, here's the next installment of my and **ScarlettWoman710**'s fic. In other, sadder news, I may have just accidentally deleted the The Sporting Life sequel I was working on. Damnit!

Anyway, enjoy!

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><p>"When's the funeral?" Tate asks after lugging his dufflebag upstairs, when he's seated at the round table in the kitchen, "because I really can't stay past Sunday."<p>

"Why, big meeting comin' up?" Constance beams from the refrigerator, bringing over a polished tray of sweet tea, Adelaide's death obviously the farthest thing from her mind.

He was catching a red-eye to New York on Monday for lunch with a big name director interested in casting him in a leading role for his next picture. He'd done movies before, played the love interest or the one-dimensional villain a few too many times, but this would be different. If everything went well, this would make him a household name and this could get him Oscar buzz.

Goodbye television, hello A-list.

"Uhm, yeah, kinda."

"That's so exciting, Tate! What's it for?"

He hated talking about work with her. Sure, all things considered, he really couldn't complain about how things had turned out, but growing up with the weight of such unattainable expectations thrust upon him had been stressful to say the least.

Constance moved to Los Angeles with big dreams and when they went unfulfilled, she promised herself the next generation of Langdons would be stars. But much to his mother's chagrin, neither Adelaide nor Beau were designed for fame. So she shelved the idea, busying herself with caring for her two abominations and sucking off the guy next door that worked in theater.

That is until her next child came along. Tate. He was perfect, a precious child that grew into a handsome boy with charms and wiles fit for Hollywood. She'd started him in commercials for diapers and juice, then clothing ads which quickly evolved into TV spots and, his senior year of high school, Tate's big break. He was cast in a teen drama that would run for six seasons and be syndicated for a number of stations.

That was the beginning. That was how he ended up with a house in Malibu and a loft in Manhattan. It was why he would never have to worry for money as so many did. But fame wasn't without consequence. It was the reason his Dad left. It was where his drug habit started up and it was why he couldn't stand the only parent he had left.

"Some movie about World War II," he shrugs, tacking on a cynical. "because they definitely haven't done enough of _those_."

His mother tuts indignantly, pulling out the seat opposite her son and reaching out for her box of cigarettes.

He slides them her way and watches her light up, still waiting for a response to his question about the funeral date, gathering that she isn't ready to breach the subject when she just gifts him a brittle smile and luxuriously puffs away at the stick between her fingers.

Guilt. If he were a betting man, he'd wager that's what kept Adelaide out of their conversation. Constance had been cruel to her the poor girl's entire life. When his mother wasn't ignoring her, she'd mock and belittle Addie, barring her from all the things normal girls wanted to do, like make friends and play dress up.

And now, only in death, was she realizing she'd made his sister's already difficult life absolute hell. She never got to tell Addie how sweet she was, how smart or pretty or kind.

Adelaide went to her grave under the assumption that she was something to be pitied and feared, a monster, not a girl.

Constance has to live with that.

Drumming against the tops of his thighs, Tate chews a flake of chapped skin from his lower lip and turns towards the window, eager for a distraction, the side fence and crumbling brick off to the left suddenly reminding him of the girl he'd seen washing down her car outside. He can almost see her cryptic smile reflected in the pane, mocking and winsome at the same time.

And idly, he wonders if she'd recognized him, doubts it. A girl like her probably spent more time reading books than watching TV or at the movies, could tell you more about the tumultuous life of Gatsby's Daisy Buchanon than US Weekly's Lindsay Lohan.

"Who moved in next door?" Tate asks in what he hopes is a casual voice after another moment's speculation, dragging his eyes away from the soap swirling down the gutter and nodding towards their old home.

Constance visibly bristles, ashing and pursing her lips, the lines around her mouth stark in their ugliness against the otherwise well-preserved loveliness of her face.

"They're new," she shrugs, flippancy a poor mask for her obvious bitterness. "A doctor - well, _psychiatrist, _and his wife."

Tate hums in acknowledgement, mentally crosses out his curiosity about the car in their driveway and lifts his glass of tea for a sip.

"There was a girl outside...?"

His mother narrows her eyes and glances out the window as though she can see her out there right now, plucking up her rose bushes or taking a shit on the porch.

"Violet," she drawls, "that girl is nothing but trouble. Smokes like a chimney and sneaks out after midnight to do _Lord knows what._"

Lowering her voice to a venomous whisper, she leans in close for dramatics, "Once, when I went over with fresh muffins for Mrs. Harmon after the birth of their sweet baby boy, she answered the door in just her skivies! Didn't seem phased one bit to be chatting with the neighbor, let the door hang wide open and everything. "

Tate smiles at the conjured imagery of her lounging against the door frame, sunglasses slid halfway down her nose, tapping her toe impatiently on the hardwood while his mother blunders through a frazzled 'hello' and 'goodbye.'

"_Violet._"

Pointedly ignoring Constance's scowl, he tries the name for himself, mouthing the word a few times, wriggling his glass distractedly.

The ice clinks and he draws a design in the condensation, mulling over the way his teeth sink into his lower lip on the V and the way his tongue plucks at them on the L., and even the quiet knock of his mouth when it closes over the T.

"That's right, _Violet,_" Constance snaps irritably, "but what are we doing talking about her? You still haven't spilled the beans on what kinda stuff you're working on right now. I want _all _the juicy details."

On the list of things he wants to spend his afternoon doing, divulging his Monday plans is right up there with jumping from the roof and performing a self-castration.

So, pinching the bridge of nose to keep from losing his temper, he pushes back from the table and leaves his mother with a conciliatory, "maybe later," before heading up the stairs, the gram of cocaine he'd packed into his shaving kit all but screaming to him.

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><p>The next time he sees Violet is just twelve hours after the first time.<p>

It's past midnight and he's out roaming the sidewalks with a cigarette trapped between his lips.

He doesn't smoke, not when he isn't drinking, but there was something about being cooped up with Constance that made him itch for that nicotine burn and wonder why he'd ever kicked the habit.

The streets are empty and the houses are dark and from the top of the hill he can just see the lit up smog of Hollywood.

He's strolling back towards his house, head bowed to reply to a flurry of drunken texts from a recent ex, when a clattering across the street draws his attention.

He pockets his phone and chases the noise with his eyes.

Squinting through the dark, he can just make out the form of a young girl slinking out her open window and tiptoeing over the roof tiles to a place where she can drop down safely onto the grass.

Violet.

Her name sounds resplendent even inside his own head.

He's crossed the street and is leaning over her fence with both elbows propped against an iron bar by the time she scrubs the grass stains out of her knees.

"Do mommy and daddy know you're out past curfew?"

In a hurricane of pin-straight hair, she whips her head in his direction, but the sudden fear in her frame melts and is replaced by a smug confidence as soon as she meets his gaze across the yard.

"You," she huffs, dragging in a calming breath and smoothing both palms over her hair, "thanks for that. Nearly shit my pants."

Tate grins around the filter of his cigarette and her eye catches on the vibrant orange that burns awake with his inhale.

The grass, wet from late evening sprinklers, squelches between her toes as she saunters over and outstretches her neck, popping her lips, glaring up from under her lashes when he just stands there and looks at her.

"Gimme."

He feigns ignorance, but she snarls so instead he rears back and out of reach, making a teasing show of his next drag.

"How old are you?" It's pathetic how badly he wants to know, how badly he hopes for anything above seventeen.

"How old are _you_?"

"Ha. Ha. Very funny."

She grins up at him, a mean toothy little smile, and pushes up onto her tiptoes, both hands clamped around fence slats for the balance necessary to teeter close.

A few bats of her lashes and he caves with a sigh, lining up the webbing of his fingers with her lips, letting her nurse a few mouthfuls of smoke before reeling the cigarette away.

She closes her eyes and sways from the fence, shutting out the world for a moment to just enjoy the drag, twin spires of smoke curling out her nostrils. Then her eyes snap back open and she holds his stare while feeling out the fronts of her teeth with her tongue.

"You're Constance's kid, huh?"

"You know her?"

"Kinda-sorta. She's been over a few times to chat up my mom or whatever."

"Weird."

It wasn't. She was always poking her nose around that old house and its current inhabitants, like maybe one day a family would offer up a spare bedroom to her.

When she wasn't pushing Tate into the public eye, she was trying to wheedle her way back into that house.

Violet shrugs, disinterested, and scrapes the muddy balls of her feet against the lowest fence rung.

"You wanna kill this?"

She lifts her face up from her toes to see what he means and nods, plucking the shrunken butt from between his fingers and sucking until the pads of her finger and thumb burn.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he pats it quiet, watching as Violet grounds their shared cigarette into the bogged grass.

She looks smaller than when he'd first seen her this afternooon, at least a head shorter than him with tiny hands and bony shoulders. Younger too. Fifteen or sixteen at most.

Well, fuck.

Then, before he can kick up another conversation or beg her age, a battered jeep pulls up next to them in the gutter, music pouring from it's open windows, and Violet swings around the yard, through the front gate, and out into the street, bare feet slapping the concrete as she goes.

The jeep's packed with kids who make room for her when she climbs up the bumper and wedges herself between two boys in the backseat.

He turns in time to see her manic wave, lifts a hand in goodbye, and watches the jeep turn around in his mother's driveway, follows it until it whips around a corner at the end of the road and disappears out of sight.

There are Hollywood parties across town and a contact list of girls ready to suck him off at the barest text, but after sizing up his shoe next to a wet footprint on the sidewalk, Tate walks back home and falls asleep with Violet's name and rough guesses to when her birthday is skittering around inside his head.

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><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for reading!

I can't wait for season two of AHS to start so we can all start shipping Evan's new character with Tate, Violet, and everyone else!


	3. Chapter 3

Tate wakes up the next morning with a resilient hard on that doesn't wilt, not even after a quick jerk in bed and a cold shower. It's got Violet written all over it - not literally of course, though that might be interesting…

She'd plagued his dreams, that pretty pout and those round eyes, long limbs that could coil and cling to him.

It was pathetic, this sudden want for her. And more than that, it was _wrong. _On the frankly unrealistic chance that she was eighteen, she was still just a girl in high school living in his old house, maybe even in his old room - now wouldn't that be ironic? He was speeding towards a mid-life crisis and she was sneaking out for cigarettes at recess. Fuck, she was young enough to be his daughter if he'd been more careless as a kid.

It's thoughts like these that rattle around Tate's skull as he pulls open his dufflebag and quickly dresses, resisting the urge to draw open the blinds and search out a head of swept blonde hair.

Instead of a brush, he stands before the mirror and drags both hands through his curls after slipping into a forgotten pair of old Chuck Taylors found under his bed during a mid-buzz snooping session the previous night.

When he's as ready to welcome the day as he ever is, Tate swings out of his room and pads down the hall towards the stairs only to stop with one hand on the banister and his foot mid-way between the first and second step.

He really can't deal with his mother before coffee and a line or two. If she's down there now, smiling up at him when he turns into the kitchen, he's just going to fucking lose it. The woman oozes false affection and it burrows under his skin like a blood-sucking tick would - it's a painfully appropriate simile if he's honest with himself, and that really just depends on the day.

So before braving the stairs, Tate whips back around to cut out a thick line of white powder on the cherrywood desk by the window. Hunched over with his Starbucks gold card, he does his best to ignore the swell of nostalgic deja vu that taunts him. But then, just like that, because that's how coke works, it's gone, and so is his anxiety about facing Constance and just about everything else.

Sucking the bitter taste of it from his gums, his descent into the kitchen is almost pleasant, made infinitely better when he notices the little Post-It note stuck carefully to the freezer door.

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><p><em>Sweetest Tate,<em>

_ I had to run into town for a hair appointment. Might do a little shopping after, but I'll be home by dinner. Steak sound good? _

_Love,_

_Mother_

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><p>Tate, grinning from ear to ear, crumples the note in his fist and tosses it into the sink, pulling out his phone to check his messages while he bumbles around the kitchen and puts together a pot of coffee, leaning against the edge of a counter while it steeps.<p>

He's got two texts from his agent about upcoming magazine shoots, an angry voicemail from his ex asking why he didn't call her back, and a slew of missed calls from various people in the industry, everything from producers to co-stars to make up artists he'd slept with once or twice.

And just like her ears were burning, phone still in hand, a designated ringtone vibes into his palm and his agent's name lights up the screen. Incoming Call: Moira O'Hara.

He toys with the idea of letting it ring, but he'd already ignored her enough in the past few days and the old bat tends to start taking shit like that personal.

_"_If this is about what I think it's about, can we just not?" Tate sighs, holding the phone to his ear with one shoulder, freeing up his hands to pour himself a cup of coffee and drag out one of the low dining chairs.

_"_It is, and no, we can't _'just not.' _They've set a court date and if you don't attend it could mean jail time, Tate."

And there goes his buzz.

Tate Langdon was known for more than just the pretty way he cried on cue and those loose blonde curls in Hollywood. He had a temper, and it had gotten him into trouble more than once; bar fights with nobodies and street brawls with the paparazzi. Most of the cases against him were settled out of court by a ridiculous chunk of cash and a few autographs, but this prick just wouldn't quit.

Somehow photos had leaked of him and his sister Adelaide from when they were kids, some cheesy photo shoot his mom had wheedled them into. Well this one photog, a real douche from TMZ, had cornered him outside of a club one night and started spouting off questions about what it was like growing up with a retard for a sister and whether or not it hurt his chances of getting laid in high school. The woman under Tate's arm, his girlfriend at the time: Hayden McClaine, had tried to keep him calm and guide him into the waiting car, but he'd spun out of her grasp and popped the guy square in the mouth. And when he was spitting teeth into the gutter, Tate got him twice more in the gut, kicked him too when he folded in on himself and went down, said he was going kill him if he didn't shut the fuck up. And of course it was all caught on tape. It made the rounds to every major media outlet and was even parodied on Saturday Night Live in a week's time.

Tate knew he was fucked, but he was still hoping for community service and an 'I'm Sorry' in the form of a big meaty check. Hey, if it happened for Sean Penn it could happen for him.

"Alright, when is it?" But then there's a knock at his door and, reduced to a bundle of nerves, Tate spills his coffee over and curses into the receiver, instructing Moira to email him the details and he'll get back to her later, that there was someone at the door and that he had a crotch of hot coffee to deal with.

Snagging a towel from the oven rack, Tate grumbles and swabs at the scalding wet patch, head whipping in the direction of the door when the bell is hammered against impatiently.

"Just hold your fucking _horses_!" he growls, tossing the dish rag into the sink when it's apparent he's just going to have to change his pants. As far as mornings go, his mother's absence aside, he'd like to employ a do-over.

Before he jumps up the stairs to find a clean pair of jeans, because he wants to take his shitty morning out on someone other than himself, Tate stalks over to the front door and wretches it open, "What do you want?" barrelling out of his mouth in a jumbled hiss before he even takes into account who the culprit is that's been abusing his doorbell..

Standing in the center of the doormat, dressed in just a tight ribbed tank top and a pair of tiny shorts, Violet smirks up at him with a plateful of fresh cookies before her gaze is drawn down to Tate's soaked groin. There goes his suave demeanor.

"Someone get a little excited to see me?" she teases, ignoring his open scowl to hand over the warm plate. "My mom baked them, white chocolate and raspberry I think. She's got a shitload of free time on her hands."

Tate's anger fizzles out at the sight of the strange girl and he mechanically takes the cookies, due embarrassment burning through his cheeks. "Uh, cool. Thanks."

He steps back to place them on the counter and returns to find Violet standing at the threshold. Internally cursing whatever God would let him spill boiling coffee all over his dick only moments before the tempting morsel of jailbait saunters over, he holds the door open with one hand to lean against it and frowns at Violet's expectant pout.

"So, are you going to invite me in?"

Before he can respond, mouth unhinged in automatic refusal, images of magazine covers flash through his eyes: Series Favorite Arrested For Statutory Rape, Langdon Behind Bars For Consorting With Minor, Harmon Family Sues Star For Deflowering Their Sweet Angel. They scroll by endlessly in a horrific slideshow until he's dizzy with fear.

It didn't even make sense, what he saw in her. She wasn't like the other girls he's dated, or lusted after and eventually fucked. Violet was different.

She was different, but she sure as hell wasn't worth jail time.

Confident in his response, he fades back into the present, ready to politely ask her to go, only to find that Violet is no longer waiting patiently on his stoop but has ducked under his arm and is now sitting at the edge of the kitchen counter. "Brain fart?"

"What?"

But she just smirks in lieu of any explanation and bounces her heels back against the cabinets, big brown eyes drifting over to the open pack of smokes on the kitchen table.

Well, so much for telling Violet to fuck off.

Tate concedes to her intrusion with a weary sort of sound and rakes a hand through his hair, pushing shut the door, speaking more to the wood than to her when he wets his lips and opens his mouth. "Alright, well... I'm going to go change. Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge, I'll be back in a second."

He swerves back towards the stairs, but like a hummingbird on crack she beats him there, bounding up in front of him and sweeping down the halls in search of which room might be his.

The fact that she's little more than a child becomes apparent now, and a sliver of his want for her wilts as he trudges after her, only to bloom in double when he walks in on the pale girl stretched out belly-down across his mattress. She's thumbing carelessly through a script he'd brought with him, but her eyes cut up to his face when he wanders over to unzip his dufflebag and withdraws a clean pair of jeans.

"Don't you know it's rude to stare?" he deadpans, lying the pants at the edge of his bed to free his hands, to peel open his fly.

Forgetting to toe off his converse beforehand, he has trouble stepping out of his jeans and ends up sitting down with his back to Violet to tug them the rest of the way off.

When he's unfolded the fresh pair and has them on up past his knees, he feels the weight on the bed shift and, a beat later, a pair of small hands creeping and curving over the tops of his shoulders.

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><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for reading! Things are finally heating up between these two, maybe?


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **This chapter is brought to you by the wonderfulwonderful **Scarlettwoman710.**

Enjoy!

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><p>His no bullshit demeanor cracks at the feel of her hands, small and warm, moving over the muscle of his shoulders.<p>

"What the hell are you doing?" he barks, and then winces internally at just how breathless she's made him.

"You're too fucking tense, you need to relax," she says, squeezing his shoulders gently. The tips of her nails pierce his skin and he sucks in a breath.

He can hear the smile in her voice as she leans over and whispers in his ear, "Oh, you're one of _those_ types. Get a little pleasure from pain, huh?"

His dick twitches under his boxers, forcing him to cross his hands over his lap to disguise the growing bulge. He could take her, here and now, if he wanted to. She's all bravado that may be real or false but he's been around enough women that wanted his dick in his lifetime to know the signs. Her nipples, hard, poking into his back. The slight pulse forward of her hips as she unconsciously rocks against him. The purr at the end of each sentence. She's trying to act like she's just messing with him but he knows that if he spun around and laid her out across the bed and started _actually _fucking her, she'd want it. She'd beg for it. She'd be purring like a kitten before too long.

The headlines flip through his head again. He can see himself, eyes wide, as that guy from _To Catch a Predator_ asks him if he knew that screwing a sixteen year old girl was illegal.

No, best to just get her the hell out of there and jerk off the second she's out the door.

"I actually get more pleasure from _giving _a little pain," he deadpans, the picture of disinterest. In reality, the thought of pinching her nipples and leaving bruises on her hips has his dick swelling between his thighs but from the waist up he couldn't give a flying fuck about the jailbait squeezing her hands over his biceps. Hell, he didn't take all those acting classes for nothing.

"Oh really? Well in that case..." she coos, pulling her hands away from him to slide forward on the bed, one knee cuffing his thigh, her other leg flat against this back. "I've been bad. I should be punished."

He rolls his eyes. "You're sixteen. How bad could you possibly be?"

Her face darkens. "You'd be surprised," she says seriously. "I mean, look how we got here. I come over, dressed in practically nothing, and invite myself in. You tell me to stay downstairs, I ignore you and come into your bedroom to watch you change. I'm completely throwing myself at you, right now, even though I know that if we did this, we'd both get in a lot of trouble."

"Yeah, I would," he says flatly, her words reminding him of everything he has to lose. "So since you know that what you're doing is wrong -"

"I should be punished," she repeats, stressing the last word. She unfolds his arms and, as good of an actor as he is, his body betrays him and becomes little more than putty in her hands as she lays across his lap and pulls his palm down to cup her ass.

"Spank me," she says then, twisting up to look at him and wiggling her hips invitingly.

His mouth has gone completely dry, he can't swallow, he might die. He's always been a touch on the melodramatic side but he means it, his heart might actually stop because his cock is jutting into her stomach and her ass is warm and firm beneath his hand.

"You're fucking crazy," he growls, trying to wretch her off. It would be easier if there was any blood left in his arms, but he thinks it might all have been circumvented to his dick.

"You're right. I need to be dealt with." She turns her head to flash him a smile. "My father always said I needed a firm hand."

"Violet, you've got to get out of here," he says firmly between clenched teeth. "You're gorgeous and if you were a little older, _believe me_, I'd have you begging and pleading for me to stop by the time we were done, but you're not. So. Get. Off."

"Only if you get off first," she says sweetly, leering up at him from under full lashes. "It's not like you're not enjoying it. Trust me, I know exactly how good I'm making you feel." She rolls and puffs her stomach against his dick for emphasis.

As turned on as he is, he's pissed now. He's horny as fuck and Violet's forbidden ass poking out of her tiny shorts isn't helping. If she was eighteen he'd do more than just fuck her; he'd date her, he'd marry her, he'd lock her inside his apartment and keep her forever. His whole adult life he's had nobody but people kissing his ass - his mother, his agent, the press, and every brainless slut he's ever met and bedded after one too many gin and tonics. It's refreshing to find someone that doesn't give a shit that he's famous. He likes that Violet challenges him, isn't trying to be seen with him just to be seen, to end up in some fucking copy of Us Weekly somewhere. She digs _him_, not the public persona of him, and he likes that. He likes that she's got balls, that she takes what she wants. But he _can't._ It's wrong and more importantly, it's illegal.

No more. No more of this stupid game. He's got to get her out of here. If she wants a spanking, she'll get one. She probably doesn't even think he'll do it, she just likes watching him squirm - maybe it gets her off. A couple of swats on her ass and she'll be out of here like a shot, and hopefully learn better than to prance around him in too few clothes and invoke many a depraved fantasy.

"Fine," he says testily. "You asked for it." And even though he's doing it to get her to leave, he wants to have a little something to remember her by, so he leans forward and whispers in her ear. "You've been a very, _very_ naughty girl, Violet."

His breath moves strands of hair in front of her face, and he can feel her shudder over his thighs. Yeah, she fucking wants him.

_Thwack! _"And -" _Thwack! _ "bad -" _Thwack! _ "girls -" _Thwack! "_get -" _Thwack! _ "punished!"

Her pert bottom ripples with each swat and he finishes by gently rubbing her ass, kneading it, his thumb slipping under the line of her shorts and onto her soft skin hidden below.

It takes a moment to regain her composure, but after a few slow breaths she pushes herself up by her arms so that she's kneeling next to him. "Thank you," she says softly, the hint of a grin on her lips. Her eyes are wide, wild, and full of lust.

"I'll go now. I don't want to get you into trouble. But first, I want to give you something. Close your eyes, okay?"

"Violet," he says warily. Not that he wouldn't take whatever she wanted to give him. She's got him so close to the point of "fuck it," that he can barely find it in himself to offer anything more than token resistance.

"I won't touch you, I promise," she swears, the brazen edge back in her voice. "Just close your eyes and trust me, okay?"

His dick is going to explode if she doesn't get the hell out of there soon, so rather than argue, he just nods and closes his eyes.

He feels the bed shift as she stands up, then hears the rustle of fabric in front of him. He can't decide if he should be praying that she's naked when he opens his eyes or fully clothed.

"Okay, open them," she says a moment later, swaying in the space at the end of his bed. When he sees her fully dressed, he sighs, whether from relief or disappointment, he isn't sure. Maybe a little bit of both.

"I wanted to give you a present," and for the first time, there's a hint of shyness in her voice. She takes his hand and opens it, pressing something into his palm and curving his fingers closed over it - a pair of pink cotton panties. They're curled into a little ball, but that does little to disguise the fact that they're completely soaked through. His hand closes tighter into a fist around them and his breath snags in his throat.

She smiles, now that she knows he's pleased, and combs back her hair. "Jerk off into those," she says, back to being fearless.

She leans forward into him then, until her mouth is just a whisper from his own, her eyes drawn to the blushed curve of his lips. And when she speaks, her voice a hoarse whisper, her words are breathed right into him, "and when you do, think about how wet I got when you spanked me."

He's dazed when she brushes their lips together in a chaste kiss and then promptly straightens and sashays across the room.

"See you around, Tate," she chirps innocently, and disappears out the door.

He doesn't dare breathe again until he hears the heavy wooden front door shut behind her. He stands up to look out the window, watching her sprint across the yard and up the front steps of her house.

Before he can blink, he's got his boxers around his ankles and his fingers wrapped around his dick, his other hand closed tight around Violet's panties. Her wetness sponges against his fingers and he lifts it to his nose for a deep inhale.

When he spurts hot and sticky into his hand, it's with a choked "Violet," tumbling past his lips.

After he's cleaned himself up and put on a fresh pair of clothes, the scent of her all over his old shirt and jeans, he flops back on the bed with a dramatic sigh.

T_his girl is nothing but trouble_, he thinks, but then he grins, a too-wide smile that pulls at his cheeks and makes him feel a little crazy.

He always did like trouble.

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><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for reading. Sorry we teased you! But we promise that the sexytimes are coming!


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **Hey guys! In honor of all those mouth-watering EP pictures coming out right now, here's the next chapter of my and **Scarlettwoman710**'s fic.

Enjoy!

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><p>After Violet leaves, Tate lays in for, fuck knows how long, just running their little exchange through his mind, long enough to have him growing hard again at the memory. He rubs his fingers together absentmindedly; he'd washed his hands, but he swore he could still feel the her, slick between his thumb and forefinger. If he closed his eyes he could still see the print of his palm hot against the bare skin beneath her shorts. It made him flush, giddy like a schoolboy again, even with the slight undercurrent of panic that was thrumming in the back of his brain. Hell, she could be on the phone with some trashy tabloid right now, telling them exactly how much pressure famous actor Tate Langdon uses when spanking the ass of the teenage dream next door.<p>

She could be, but he didn't think she was.

Her want for him equalled his, that much was clear.

Not that it mattered, if the cops or the press started asking questions. Even if Violet drugged him and wrestled her way onto his dick he'd still be, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, a sick bastard that fucked almost-children. The entire situation was a lose-lose. So no, he wouldn't be taking her up on whatever sexual favors she'd no doubt offer him if he gave her the chance.

But fuck if it wasn't fun to think about it. At the very least, Violet had ensured that his visit home wouldn't be boring.

His train of thought is disrupted then by the jingle of keys and the sound of the heavy door scraping across the hardwood floors. "Tate? Mama's home," Constance calls from down the stairs.

He gives a low groan, pushing up from his pillow. "Mommy fucking dearest," he mutters grimly.

The thought of taking another hit flits across his brain but he decides against it; he didn't bring much home and he'd need whatever he had left to get him through everything he'd need to do as he (very publicly, knowing his mother) mourned his sister.

Addie. His heart lurches in his chest, but before his hurt can bloom he's got it tamped down again - all of this suppression of his emotions is really going to give him an ulcer one day.

He heaves himself out of bed and stumbles down the stairs, following the trail of cigarette smoke through the house and into the kitchen. "Hey," he says tiredly, reaching for her little box of smokes and drawing one out. The bitch smokes Marlboro menthols, not his usual unfiltered Camels, but he'd blown through the last two in his pack after Violet's jailbait visit.

She tuts at him and pulls a face as he puts the cigarette between his lips and flicks open the Zippo from his pocket.

"You shouldn't smoke," she chastises, shaking her head. "You'll ruin that beautiful face of yours." She reaches out to stroke his cheek with the backs of her fingers but he steps out of her reach, muttering an irritated, "Jesus," under his breath when she has the gall to look hurt.

She covers her embarrassment at his rejection by folding her hand to her hair, for all intents and purposes just checking to make sure that her perfectly coiffed style is still shellacked into place, and clears her throat. "I've just come from the funeral home," she drawls, voice hard again, taking a drag from her own cigarette. "The wake will be tomorrow, three to five and seven to nine. Funeral's gonna be the day after at two."

The blunt mention of burying Addie has his throat feeling dry with emotion. "Then what?" he asks, turning his head to stare out the window, to hide the glassy sheen of tears in his eyes from his mother.

"And then, when it's all over, I thought that we'd have a little reception, here. Food and drinks and the like. It is custom, after all. What kind of wine do you prefer, red or - "

"I meant, what's going to happen to Addie?"

"Oh," Constance says, waving her hand dismissively. "She'll be buried in the Oak Hill cemetery, next to your father."

"No."

The intensity in his voice surprises them both. "What?" she inhales, taken aback.

"No. Addie hated tight spaces. She wouldn't want to be in a box somewhere." He narrows his eyes at her accusingly and she grimaces, fully aware of what the look he's giving her implies.

The closet. He remembers. He would never forget.

"Fine," she says in a tight voice after a tense beat. "She'll be cremated then. Happy?"

"No," he huffs, exhaling a cloud of smoke into his mother's face. "Why are we having a wake at all? Or a reception? Jesus, mom. Addie never had any friends because you barely let her out of the fucking house! Nobody gives a shit that she's gone!"

"Enough!" Constance shouts, slapping her open hand down against the tabletop. Then, shaking her head and taking a deep breath, trying to regain her composure, she leans forward to glare at him.

He recognizes this expression. Danger. He'd seen it enough in his youth.

"I will not sit here and listen to you criticize me," she hisses. "You sit on your high horse but you have no idea the difficulties your brother or sister faced. You have no idea how much I sacrificed for them, for you, to give you kids what you needed over the years." She draws in another breath, letting her face fall into it's practiced expression of relaxed calm once more.

"Now, we will have a wake and a reception because that is the way things are done," she says, standing up, a gesture meaning that the conversation is over. "Do you understand me, Tate?"

He swallows the bile rising fast in his throat and nods. It's not worth fighting with her, not when he can count the days he has left here, with her, on a few fingers. Soon enough he'll be gone, only to return for a token yearly visit (or to check in on Violet after her eighteenth birthday).

She takes in his acquiescence and smiles, savoring a victory. "That's my boy," she purrs. "Now. I'm going to pick out clothes for Addie. Be a dear and mow the lawn, will you?"

He nods again. At least it will give him an excuse to get out of the house. He feels smothered inside.

With that, she saunters out of the kitchen and Tate squeezes his hand into a white-knuckled fist, pounding it into the wall above the oven. He can hear his mother stutter on the steps at the sound but, after pausing briefly, she continues upstairs.

He hates it here. He hates her.

He's pulled away from his brooding by the the baseline of a song and he wanders to the window over the sink to look outside. The music's coming from Violet's window, an old Nirvana album that came out before she was born.

A grin settling over his face, thoughts of Constance slip from his mind and he pulls off his shirt, stuffing it into the back pocket of his jeans. He threads through the house and into the garage to acquire the mower before rolling it out back, planning on giving her the kind of teasing she's been treating him to over the last day and a half.

But when he gets out there and can see her properly, she's not headbanging and dancing around her room in panties and knee-highs like he'd imagined. Her eyes are cold and flat, staring over him to gaze blankly at the treetops across the way.

His heart tattoos against his chest. Had he misread everything this afternoon? Was she calling tabloids, ratting him out? Was this all just some sick game? Had her goal been to ruin him all along?

He's moments away from a major panic attack when she abruptly gets up and flicks off her stereo.

In the absence of the drums and guitar, he can hear it clearly now - shouting. No, not shouting, screaming. Her parents are fighting, and by the sound of it, it's a doozy. Words like "selfish, cheating bastard" and "frigid bitch" were being thrown back and forth between the two.

He grimaces, reminded of his own days inside that house, of his parents too.

He has a new understanding of Violet now. Fighting, horrible parents. He can relate. No wonder she acts so old. Nothing like having two immature "adults" as your caregivers to make you grow up too fast.

There's a lull in the fighting then and Tate takes a moment to wipe at his forehead with the back of his hand, but just when he's sure it's over, the sound of something heavy shatters against a wall.

His eyes dart back to where Violet was standing to see that she's alright, but she's not there and it's then that he decides the lawn can wait. Saying a silent prayer that whatever'd been thrown hadn't been aimed at her, Tate winces and ducks back into the cool, dusty garage. He can't bear to hear anymore.

* * *

><p>Later that night, when Tate's setting out his suit for the following afternoon, for the last time he'll ever see Addie, there's a gentle tapping at his window.<p>

The noise draws his gaze, but past the closed blinds he can see nothing and then it seems the sound falls away. After a beat of anticipation, he turns back to his dresser and resumes flattening out the collar of his Oxford, crisp from his mother's ironing board.

He's been able to stave off the crushing weight of Addie's sudden death thus far, but alone in his old room, where she used to dwell just down the hall, it threatens to overwhelm him now.

His eyes sting and his fingers seize up in the fabric of his shirt and he thinks he hears that rapping again, but bother doesn't looking back this time.

"Why her?" he whispers hopelessly down at his hands, urging himself to finish picking out a tie and retire for the evening.

But then there's that tapping again, only it's louder now, more insistent, not merely the too-close swaying of a tree branch.

His eyes cut over to the window once more and this time he moves, laying the shirt over his mattress.

When he tugs open the blinds he's expecting maybe a squirrel or raccoon or just the wind, but instead he's met with Violet's face in the dark. She's crouched outside his window on the roof with one hand against the glass, nodding for him to let her in.

Irritation floods him at the sight of her, anything to wash away the pain, and he meets her gaze with a hard face, mouthing a stern, "no," and shaking his head. He's already made up his mind on the matter, it's just not worth it. (Oh, but it is, a voice somewhere inside his own head stresses.)

He's prepared for a cheeky grin and dismissal of his refusal, but for the nth time she surprises him. She doesn't look smug, she looks wounded, and after a moment's staring she just turns and slowly begins making her way back down the slanted shingles towards the rain spout.

Tate watches her hunched back as she retreats and, dragging a hand down his face, mutters a tired, "fuck..." and heaves open the window.

"Alright, come on," he concedes, waving her back up the roof when she turns back at the sound of his voice. She hesitates there like she might just leave and it makes his heart stutter, but then she's making her way over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder for balance and folding inside.

Without a word, she moves past him and ventures out into the hall. His eyes follow her until she disappears into the bathroom and the sink gushes on, then he closes the window and moves his shirt out of the way to sink down on the bed.

She returns a few minutes later with clean feet and a small smile, hovering in the doorway quietly, nothing at all like the girl he'd seen this afternoon.

"What's up?" Tate asks just to cut the silence. He pats the space next to him on the bed, glad for the distraction from his thoughts.

In answer, she just shrugs and toddles over to sit cross-legged where he'd gestured, hands cupping her elbows. "Nothing. I dunno."

The air between them is so foreign, still charged, but in a softer way. She looks sad. Her little pout is what clues him in.

"So, uh, I heard your parents fighting earlier today when I was out mowing the lawn. That sucks."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah... it's pretty shitty." There's laughter in her voice, but it's humorless.

He rubs his lips together and glances about the room for safer topics. Finding none, he continues on.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really." Her answer is quiet, unsure, but when she looks up again, the hardness in her eyes is gone. She turns to more wholly face him on the bed and twists the ends of her hair with her fingers. "What's up with you?"

Tate barks out a laugh, he doesn't know why, and simply shakes his head rather than diving into the clusterfuck that will be tomorrow. "Nothing much, really."

But Violet doesn't buy it. She spots his suit jacket hanging from the rack in the empty closet and eyes him skeptically. "Liar. What's the fancy get-up for?"

His eyes are impulsively drawn to where she's looked and he flounders for a moment, wondering just how much she wants to hear.

They're silent for a few seconds, but then realization dawns on her face and she looks sheepish all of a sudden. "Oh... Addie."

She knew. Fuck, of course she knew. They were neighbors.

"Yeah," he sighs. "Tomorrow's the wake."

"Shit, that's right. I think we might be going - my parents and me."

Tiny hope puckers up like a flame in his chest at the idea that she'll be there and he nods. "Yeah, did you know her?"

"A little. Your mom didn't let her out much, but she'd come over sometimes." A small smile tugs at her lips at a memory. "One day she let me put some makeup on her, eyeshadow and mascara and stuff. I think she just wanted to feel pretty for once. And she was."

Her last few words fall on deaf ears, but when she's done talking Tate's trying to tamp down a grin. Violet was kind to his sister?

An unidentifiable emotion thickens in his throat at the newfound knowledge and somehow, learning that this girl had made his sister's tortured existence that much less painful, makes his want for her grow tenfold in different ways.

He goes quiet at that, just soaking in what she'd just revealed, and only finds her eyes again when he feels fingers at his jaw.

"You're gonna have to shave."

His contemplative expression splits open into a wide smile and he lets himself lean into her touch, just a little, closing his eyes at the way the tips of her fingers feather up the cut of his cheek and sweep down again to brush over the rough stubble below his chin.

The awkward quietness from before is gone and when she withdraws her hand, he tries not to lament the loss of contact, moving to sit propped against the headboard.

It's a motion that she follows soon after, their hips pressed together as he bends down to snatch up one of his scripts from the floor.

"Want to help me go over some lines?"

He flips open the script and she giggles, saying yes, that she'll help, but only if they each get to read half of the characters. He agrees and they read through it twice in dramatic voices, getting lost in the plot and each other for a little while, leaving behind their hurt.

On the third read through, when she demands he play all the women and she the men, she grows sleepy halfway in and slumps down his side, one arm winding over his chest. And he can't help the way he stares down at her, tiny and curled against him, looking harmless, more like a kitten than a minx.

Too precious in sleep, and not because the idea of having her in his bed, even without any ulterior motives, is wonderful, Tate bends to turn out the light and tosses his script down into his bag.

"Goodnight, Violet," he murmurs into her hair when he's laying flat against the mattress with her, drawing her against his side with one arm, fitting her cheek against the inside of his shoulder.

That night he doesn't think once about the cocaine in his shaving kit nor what the tabloids would read if he were caught with her in his bed. He listens to the soft sounds of her breathing and stares up to mentally draw designs in the asbestos-covered ceiling, feeling more content here, with her, than he had in years. It makes him think that if he could spend every night with her, whatever the consequences, it'd be worth it.

* * *

><p>The next morning he wakes up alone, but after pushing aside the irrational pang of hurt at seeing her side of the bed empty, he finds his suit has been draped neatly over the end of the bed and that there's a note tucked into the jacket pocket.<p>

_See you at 3:00._

_-V_

_P.S. Don't forget to shave._

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><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for reading. We're already working on the next chapter. I just want to take a moment to thank everyone that reviews this story. We read each and every one and they're all so lovely. Seeing them make bad days good and good days better. Bless this fandom. c:


	6. Chapter 6

Tate Langdon loosens the knot in his tie and tugs it wearily away from his neck.

Three hours of his sister's wake down, one to go.

It had been every bit as horrible as he thought it would be. The first session of viewing hours had lagged by. A handful of Constance's family members from Virginia had come to pay their respects - cousins that Tate had never met and had little desire to see again. As if the fact that they shared his mother's lilt hadn't been enough to make his teeth clench, they had been simply _thrilled_ to finally speak to their _oh so handsome_ celebrity relative. In between their fawning over him and chatting animatedly with Constance, very little mourning of his sister actually took place.

It set him on edge, made veins pop up in his neck and forehead and thrum inside his skull. Just being in the same room with so many people that shared his bloodline made him physically sick to his stomach.

But the only thing worse than having people in the funeral home was _not _having people there. Those were the seconds that had dragged into minutes that had crawled into hours, time spent with just him and his mother sitting in uncomfortable chairs and staring at the door, waiting for someone to show up in remembrance.

He knows his sister didn't have many friends, but it's never been so painfully obvious as it is in her passing. None of the few people that had come had actually _known _Addie, that much was obvious. They hadn't commented on what a lovely smile she'd had or how joyful and optimistic she was. They hadn't shared a personal anecdote or offered to tell him a story about some memory of Addie from when she was alive. No, all they had done was give a generic word of apology after shaking his hand and then tilted their heads to ask if he was _really_ that actor from that one show on TV.

The people milling about the funeral home now are all his mother's friends and acquaintances - women from a bridge league, a handful of members from her congregation. He's given up any attempt at social behavior and is standing over his sister's coffin instead, gently running a thumbnail over a curve in the smooth mahogany.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. The events of the day are slowly overwhelming him. He can't be in this room any longer, with this people, with that casket.

He needs another hit.

"Tate?"

It's the only voice that could reach him here and now. Violet. The mere sound of his name on her lips could dredge him up from any depth.

He turns to face her, a smile already pushing dimples into his cheeks. She's there with her family, all dressed in somber colors with even darker expressions. He feels a thrill at seeing her, wants to pull her close and nuzzle into hair that he now knows (after spending last night so close to her) smells like lavender and vanilla. His heart pounds in his chest but then he remembers where he is and who she's with and he lets his expression fall into what he hopes is something less befitting of the pervert next door.

"Hi Violet," he says kindly. "Thanks for stopping by."

"We wanted to come to pay our respects," Violet's mother says. She's a lovely woman, probably around ten years older than he is, but it's clear that she's taken many efforts to keep the aging process in check. She's certainly pretty, a bronze beauty, but nothing compared to her porcelain-skinned daughter. "Thanks," Tate says, taking her hand to shake it. She offers him a smile. "Addie was such a lovely girl," she says gently. "She used to come over and help with the roses. She had quite the green thumb, your sister."

His lowly opinion of Violet's mother rises at her story. "Thank you," he says, surprised, his eyes moving to Dr. Harmon. His expression is bored, put out. It's clear that he's not thrilled to be spending his precious time at the funeral of the sad girl that had spent time screwing around in his wife's garden. That alone would be enough to make Tate hate him but then he takes note of the patriarch's leather jacket. A leather fucking jacket, in L.A., in the middle of spring. It had to be seventy degrees outside. Everything about him screams pretentious douchebag and suddenly Tate couldn't give a shit about trying to make nice with the father of his seductress.

He turns to Violet instead. "It's been a long day," he admits to her, shoving his hands in his pockets to avoid the sudden temptation of pulling her into his arms. "Harder than I thought it would be."

She smiles up at him sympathetically, a genuine expression as opposed to the fake bullshit he'd been subjected to all day.

He wants to reach out to her. He wonders if she feels the same.

"We should go offer our condolences to Constance," Dr. Harmon says then, obviously trying to move things along so he could get back to - if the argument Tate overheard yesterday is to be believed - fucking his side piece of ass. Violet's mother nods and gives Tate a final comforting hand gesture and murmur of sympathy before dragging Violet away with them to talk with his cocksucker of a mother.

He watches them for a moment, speaking in soft voices. Constance glances back towards the coffin at the front of the room and clasps one hand over her chest, almost like she's upset that Addie's gone, hamming up her grief for the sympathy of the family living in her old house.

It's pathetic. It's too much, his sister in a box on a table and the object of his forbidden lust talking to Constance.

He needs a drink, a hit, a fucking lobotomy right now, but he'll have to settle for a cigarette.

Gnashing his teeth together at the way her eyes well up with practiced tears, he heads outside, giving his mother a cursory hand wave on the way out.

He finds a spot on the back of the building, a small corner of a concrete wall that he can sit on and smoke in peace. Turning his back to the funeral home, he lights up a stick and pulls a long drag of nicotine into his lungs, sighing heavily at the pleasant burn.

Finally alone, he lets the emotions of the day sink over him as two tears make their way down his cheeks. His eyes have been glassy all morning, but only now, when he's sure his mother's locked away inside with guests, does he allow himself this moment of weakness.

He stares down at the column of ash eating its way towards his fingers and hopes that Addie's somewhere better, that she's too busy being happy today to bother looking down on he and his mother and this sham of a goodbye ceremony. He's never been one to believe in heaven, but if there's any kindness in the universe, surely a spot's been reserved somewhere for his loving sister.

Lost in melancholy, her touch is so light that he almost doesn't feel it at first, two little hands resting on his shoulders.

He whips around to find her there behind him, her expression soft.

"Violet," he says in lieu of a proper greeting, hastily wiping under his eyes, veiling the roughness in his voice.

"I wanted to hug you in there," she admits openly. And then she does. Letting her eyes slip closed, she gently wraps both arms around his shoulders and drags his top half forwards, resting her cheek against his throat.

"Violet, somebody could see," he says, anguished, but tired too. Too tired to feel any real opposition to the warm embrace.

"Nobody can see, we're behind the fucking funeral parlour," she mumbles into his neck. "Stop freaking out. I just want to make you feel better, okay?"

And God help him, he lets her. She feels so fucking good in his arms, her hands weaving idly through the curls at the back of his neck, her breath hot and sweet against the skin above his shirt collar. Way too good to push away. It's the hug he should have received from his mother this morning, were she not so cruel and unfeeling. It's tight and warm and he lifts his hand with the cigarette up to crook an arm loosely around her waist, careful not to burn her.

After a few quiet beats of just holding, Violet pulls her head slowly from the crook of his neck, brushing her cheek against his smooth jawline as she withdraws.

"I should go," she murmurs regretfully, but pauses with their faces inches apart, her gaze snagged on his mouth. "My parents are going to notice that I'm gone."

"Okay."

But he doesn't want her to go. He wants to sprint to his car with her in tow and just leave, wants to pull out a map of the states and ask her to close her eyes and point, wants to drive wherever her finger lands with her, with the windows down and with her favorite songs filling up the cab.

And maybe she doesn't want to go either. Instead of drawing out of his space, her tongue darts out, bubblegum pink against her soft lips in contemplation. It makes him feel like a fucking teenager again, the way his heart flutters in his chest at the tiny gesture and at how she seems to make up her mind and leans forward to brush her mouth against his own.

It's not a chaste kiss like the one she gave him the previous day in his room, it's a real one. It starts out slow at first, just the tentative parting and slotting of lips, but evolves into something more when her fingers clutch at the back of his shirt and she breathes out a tiny sigh.

He wavers for a moment, aware that they might be caught any second, that all it would take is someone pushing open the back door in search of one of them, but then he remembers that his sister is dead and his mother is flaunting her "grief" like it's of some worth, and decides he really can't be bothered with consequences right now. He drops the cigarette somewhere behind her and curls his arm around her waist, dragging her forward to stand between his thighs, fingers digging into her ribs when she opens her mouth for him.

And he knows by the way her tongue writhes against his and by the moan that slips through her lips as he cups her cheek with his spare hand that she's not fucking around with or teasing him this time. This means something more. It means she's falling for him.

And he's so far past falling for her that it would be funny if it weren't so fucking tragic.

She doesn't pull back until they're both fighting for air, and when she does break their kiss, it's only to rest her forehead against the bridge of his nose and to smile down at his lap.

"I've gotta go," she says again, hands smoothing over the tops of his shoulders to fiddle with the lapels of his jacket. He nods dumbly, too enamored by the way her lips are blushing and puffed up and at the way her voice sounds, dark.

"I'll see you later," she supplies, prying out of his grip when he doesn't make a move to release her. She turns to walk away and he can't help but grin at the slight stagger in her steps. It's nice to know that he makes her weak in the knees.

Dragging a hand through his hair and leaning down to retrieve the dwindling butt, Tate sits and finishes his cigarette, grinding it into the cement of the wall when he's done and heading back inside. When he yanks open the back door, he hopes the pink in his cheeks is gone, but can't really find it himself to check before stalking back towards his mother. At least he has happier thoughts to occupy his mind for his last hour of torture.

* * *

><p>It's finally over, thank-fucking-God. His mother is chatting up the director of the funeral parlour, trying to sniff out a discount, no doubt. Whatever, not his problem. He's got fresh memories of Violet's hands on him and the knowledge that he's two days from making his escape to drown her out. Although, if he were to be honest, the prospect of leaving doesn't sound quite so appealing anymore.<p>

Violet's changed everything. He's a fucking movie star. He's had pieces of ass on both sides of the country begging for it, but now there's only one person he wants - her.

Just her.

He wants to spend his days with her, laughing and talking and burying his face between her thighs before curling around her like he did the night before and holding her until they both wake up the next morning, ready to do it all over again. The idea of anyone else touching him, even Hayden, makes his skin crawl.

"Tate," his mother calls, voice syrupy sweet. (Speaking of women that can induce such a vile reaction.) "We can go now, sweetheart."

"Fucking finally," he mumbles. He hates this whole charade. He wants to mourn his sister in private, not put on a fucking show.

"Wait, Mrs. Langdon, you forgot the prayer cards," the funeral director says when she turns to leave him. He hands her a stack of the printed cards and bows before taking his leave.

Tate holds his hand out expectantly and Constance frowns. "You don't want one of these, they're positively depressing," she grimaces, dropping the pile into her purse. "Come on, take your mother home. I need a drink."

"Jesus," he mutters under his breath. God forbid his mother go one day without sinking into a liquor induced stupor. But without the energy to pick _that _fight again, he follows her out of the viewing room, stopping to pick up a discarded prayer card from a table on the way out.

It's got a picture of a rainbow on the front, and that makes him smile. Addie always did like rainbows. The back of the card, however, garners a far less positive reaction. Psalm 23 was printed on the back - pretty standard - but the space above the prayer where there should be a picture of his sister is blank.

"Mom," he says, voice tense as he puts the pieces together. "Where's Addie's picture?"

She pauses, glancing over her shoulder. "What are you going on about?" she asks, but he can tell by the set of her shoulders that she knows.

"Addie's picture. How come it's not on the prayer card?"

She sighs. "Tate, I'm simply _exhausted_ and I am absolutely _desperate _for a gin and tonic. Could we please table this discussion until we're at home?"

"Is it because you're embarrassed of her?" he asks in a low voice, crinkling the card in his fist, edging towards her threateningly. His Violet-high is gone in the wake of realizing that Constance's never-ending abuse of Addie continues, even after her death.

"That is a horrible thing to say to me," she sneers, spinning on her heel. "I simply did not feel it was appropriate to put her picture on the card. It's not a decision I expect you to understand."

He pushes out a sharp breath through his nose and punches the wall to their left, relishing in the way his knuckles split and bleed on contact. "Are you _fucking_ kidding me, Constance?" he seethes. "This whole goddamn day was for _her!_"

"Do not call me Constance, I am your mother," she hisses in reprimand. "Now stop this, the funeral director will come back in here if he hears your carrying on like that. We don't need _another _negative blurb about you in the press right now."

"God forbid we make a scene," he snarls sarcastically. "It's all about appearances, right? Don't want anyone to remember that Addie had Downs. Gotta make sure nobody knows that your famous son is as fucked up as he is, thanks to you."

"Tate," she says warningly, but he holds up a hand to stop her, visibly shaking with rage. "You know what? I can't even fucking deal with this right now," he growls through a clenched jaw, storming past her and outside into the sunlight.

"Tate, you need to drive me home," she wails, hurrying after him as fast as her heels will allow.

As the doors swing shut, he whorls around to face her, his expression dangerous.

"Walk," he spits, heaving open the door of his coupe. He hops into the front seat of his car and locks himself in, jamming his key into the ignition.

The car purrs to life and he spares his helpless-looking mother one last glare before leaving Constance glowering at him from the empty parking lot.

His tires squeal as he peels out onto the busy road and away from his poor sister and his mom, fighting the urge to careen into oncoming traffic.

He doesn't even want to process what's just happened those last few hours. Right now, even though it makes him more like Constance than he'd admit, he just really needs a fucking drink.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Hey everyone! To everyone that is enjoying this story, and has left a review - thanks so much! I'm having a ball writing it with OhYellowBird, who is so amazing to work with. Thanks for reading! The next chapter will have more Violate naughtiness! We promise!**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: **Hello everyone! Because of your fantastic responses lately to this fic, **Scarlettwoman710** and I have whipped up the next chapter for you all. Thank you for sticking with us and sending in your lovely reviews. We are both going to be quite busy for the next few weeks so posting may be a little slow, but we'll be back soon with the next chapter. Nearing the end, perhaps!

Enjoy!

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><p>The first bar he comes to is a dive.<p>

He'd driven in aimless circles for an hour, thinking about where it was he wanted to go. Not to his mother's house, surely. Constance is the last fucking person he wants to come face to face with right now. He could go to his house in Malibu, but the drive time would really interfere with his ability to get blackout drunk, not to mention the fact that he'd have to come back for the funeral tomorrow anyway. No, he needs to find a bar he can hang out in until his mother passes out. He debates hitting up some of L.A.'s trendier hot spots before deciding that the last thing he wants to do is see and be seen.

He finds a bar about halfway between his mother's house and the community college he'd considered going to before getting lucky enough to be cast as the next teen hearthrob. It's dingy, brick, and the faded sign that reads "The Wine Cellar" is chipped and peeling. He loves it already. It's not named after an adjective or verb like all the other turgid clubs in this town, "Pure" or "Tryst" or something else equally uninspired. It's the kind of bar where people drink to get drunk instead of worrying about the calorie content of whatever trendy drink with too many names is popular at the moment.

It's perfect. And he can't get inside fast enough.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the smokey dark of the bar. It's as unassuming on the inside as it is on the outside - pool tables in a corner, a handful of scattered tables, a beat up jukebox along the wall. There's a long bar lined with stools, a few of which are occupied by patrons nursing beers... and one of which is cradling the pert ass of Violet Harmon.

"Oh, fuck," he breathes, taking in the sight of her.

She's changed from the outfit she wore to the wake earlier. She's got on a pair of denim cutoffs, short enough to be sexy but long enough to leave a little bit to his imagination, and a ratty tank-top with a Pixies logo emblazoned across her tits. Nothing like the bourgeois designer bullshit that he'd see if he'd hit up Chateau Marmont for the night, but he doesn't want that shit anyway. He doesn't want some overly made up, bleached blonde bimbo subsisting on a diet of fruity drinks, coke and Hollywood producer cock - he wants someone he can actually talk to. Violet's been the first person he could talk to in _ages._

Of course, the fact that her legs look fantastic as she crawls up over the bar to take a shot with the bartender doesn't hurt, either.

Her face lights up when she spots him. "Well, well, well," she says, sliding off the bar and onto her barstool with practiced ease. "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine."

He reaches up his hand to rub the back of his neck and grins sheepishly. "Hey, Violet."

"Hey yourself," she says, grinning. "Need a drink after today?"

He flops onto the stool next to her. "Definitely."

"Good. I'm buying," she volunteers, completely self-assured. "Hey, Mark? We need some drinks over here."

The bartender stands up from where he'd been rinsing glasses and saunters over. He's older than Tate, probably in his forties or so, and looks so comfortable behind the bar that Tate's got to wonder if he owns the place.

"Mark, this is my neighbor Tate," Violet says, gesturing to him. "He's had a really long fucking day, so we need to get him good and drunk."

Mark's eyebrows raise slightly before falling back into a passive expression. "Whatever you say, Vi," he shrugs, leaning over the bar. Tate gets the feeling that this is the kind of place where people don't ask too many questions, and it makes him love it even more.

"I'll have a boilermaker," Tate says, reaching in his back pocket for his wallet.

"Make it two," Violet amends, reaching over and swatting his hand away. "And Mark, if you let him pay, so help me God I'll tell your wife that you lost a hundred bucks to Lenny on the Dodgers game last week."

The bartender starts chuckling quietly and reaches for shot glasses, waving away the twenty sandwiched between two of Tate's outstretched fingers. "Sorry guy, lady's orders," he grins with eyebrows raised in apology. "What do you want, whiskey, tequila, or vodka?"

"Tequila," Tate says as Violet chimes, "Whiskey."

The bartender pours their shots and slides them over, along with two draft beers in cold glasses. "Want me to put it on your tab, Vi?"

"Yeah, go ahead," she nods, reaching for the shot glass and turning back towards Tate.

"To your sister," she says softly, raising her glass between them.

He's overcome with a wave of fondness for both his sister and the girl in front of him. "To Addie," he says through a thick throat, clinking his shot with hers and throwing it back. He's glad for the burn of the liquor, it's a nice distraction from the prickling behind his eyes and the way his heart constricts in his chest as he watches Violet lick her lips.

Mark wanders back to the other end of the bar and Tate leans forward to Violet. "You come here enough that you have a tab?" he says skeptically.

She laughs. "Yeah... I take a couple of classes up at the community college - English Lit and Calculus - and I made a couple of friends that come here, sometimes. Although," she says slyly, sipping her beer, "I need to get out of my house a lot, so I'm here way more often than they are."

"Often enough to know the bartender's wife," he adds.

She nods. "Yeah, Joanie's pretty cool. So is Mark. Actually, all the people that hang out here are pretty cool. No fake bullshit, you know?" He nods. He knows exactly what she means. "They know I'm not twenty-one, but I don't think they know how old I am really," she continues. "So thanks for not blowing up my spot."

"No problem."

She peers up at him through her eyelashes after an easy beat of silence. "So how are you doing?"

He shrugs.

She nods.

She must be able to sense that he doesn't want to talk about it so she changes the subject, running her hand over his suit jacket. "You're a little overdressed for this place," she comments. "You're making me feel all inadequate and shit."

He wriggles out of his jacket and loosens his tie. "Better?"

"Almost," she hums playfully. Turning to face him in her stool, she reaches up and lifts his tie over his head, slipping it around her own slender neck. "There. Now we can both class up the joint."

His tongue goes numb in his mouth at the sight. Luckily, she's not expecting any sort of response because she folds her knees under her and leans up on the bar. "Mark, the jukebox is playing that Whitesnake crap again," she calls to him. "I thought we agreed we were going to have it permanently removed?"

Mark laughs. "You know the solution if you don't like it, doll."

She groans. "But, I don't have any quarters."

Tate steps down from his barstool. "Let me," he says, running his fingertips over the edge of her arm as he walks off. He heads over to the jukebox, feeding it change and picking songs from when he was a kid - all songs that he thinks she'd like. Nirvana, Live, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins.

The Pixies's "Where is My Mind" is winding up when he sits back down next to her. "Good choice," she comments.

"Your shirt inspired me," he supplies, his eyes jumping to the logo stretched across her breasts before looking back up to find her smirking at him. He shrugs at her knowing expression and fits her with a grin, turning his bar stool so he can rest his knee along the outside of her thigh.

They spend over an hour just talking. He learns even more about her - she's from Boston, the family moved after her mother, Vivien, caught her father, Ben, in bed with the secretary from his practice. She loves her mother but hates that she's not strong enough to either forgive and forget or walk away. She hates her father, not only because it was his infidelity that forced the move but because she's pretty sure that he's already fucking someone else. She loves her baby brother but he's too little to be particularly interesting to her at this point, and she'll be much happier when he's old enough to do something besides spit and shit.

She doesn't know what she wants to go to school for yet, but she's thinking about going into engineering - she loves words and literature but she knows that publishing is a dying field. The only people she considers her real friends are Mark, Joanie, and a couple of other regulars from the bar, they're the only people she really feels are authentic and aren't putting on a damn show. She hangs out with the kids from her college classes because it's something to do, but she'd rather be sprawled out on her barstool, smoking and talking politics any day of the week.

She's like a mascot here, ballsy and reminding them all of their younger years when they were all piss and vinegar and big ideas. She's not a kid though, and she won't be condescended to - she's a thirty year old woman trapped in a teenager's body and he can tell that the weight of it makes her exhausted.

They work their way through another shot and beer each as his last song selection comes up. "Is this the last one you picked?" she asks. They've been inching their way closer and closer to each other all night, and at this point she's practically sitting in his lap.

"Yeah, I think so. Why, didn't you like my choices?" The thought that he might have fucked up his opportunity to impress her makes him slightly nervous and he likes it. He likes the way she makes him _feel _things instead of just going through the motions.

"No, I did," she says simply. "I was just hoping that you would have picked something we could move to. I can't dance to this shit."

He barks out a laugh. "Sorry, I didn't know you wanted to hear dance Party U.S.A. crap."

She makes a noise of mock indignation. "There are great songs to dance to that aren't Top 40 boy band garbage," she says. "I think you picked these songs on purpose to avoid showing off your 'moves,'" she teases, putting the word in air quotes.

"Bite me," he snarks, tossing his blond curls out of his eyes. "I can dance."

She gets a mischievous glint in her eye. "Wanna show me?"

"Thought you said you can't dance to this shit," he teases, trying to buy himself time because the thought of her, hot and sweaty and pressed up against him is making him lightheaded.

"What if I found something better?" she challenges.

He digs in his pocket and slams a handful of quarters on the bar. "Go ahead," he dares, grinning. "But I flipped through it earlier, I doubt you'll find anything worth dancing to."

"We'll see," she hums, her eyes twinkling as she hops off the bar stool. His eyes follow her hungrily as she saunters over to and leans over the jukebox, her perfect ass on display as she rolls her hips from side to side to the beat.

He turns back to his beer because watching her is making his pants uncomfortably tight. The bartender smirks at him and, without a word, reaches for an empty shot glass and fills it to the brim with tequila.

"I think you're gonna need this," Mark says, sliding the glass in front of Tate. "She's a handful, that one."

"No shit," he mutters, tossing the shot back, feeling the liquor burn his esophagus on the way down. He smacks his lips and hands back the empty glass. "Thanks. I think I can handle her, though. I've had worse."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that," Mark grins, eyes cutting up to Violet as guitars start strumming in the background. "Violet usually has a way of getting what she wants."

* * *

><p><em>Time is on my side... yes it is.<em>

* * *

><p>He recognizes the song immediately, Mick Jagger's voice crooning over the bluesy guitar. It's a live version of their old tune, it's slower, headier. It oozes sex. Want. Lust.<p>

It's a lot like the girl wearing his tie behind him.

He turns to look at her and she looks every bit the cat that's got the cream, a slow smile working its way across her face. She doesn't say anything, just raises her hand and crooks her finger at him by way of an invitation.

She could be a magician, a witch, some fucking svengali with the effect the little gesture has on him. He slips immediately from his barstool and starts walking over to her as she swings her hips lazily in time with the music.

He reaches out to her and catches the tip of his tie to tug her forward, reeling her in. Her eyes are dark with lust when she lifts her face, her lips pulled into a pout. He can feel the start of a good buzz flowing through his bloodstream but it's not the booze that has him feeling this way, it's her. It's the way the sweat is glistening on her skin and his tie falling between her perfect breasts and the way she leans into him with her hips, her back arched to pull her torso away slightly so she can look up at him through half-lidded eyes.

* * *

><p><em>Now you always say that you wanna be free, but you'll come running back, yes you'll come running back to me.<em>

* * *

><p>His hands rest low on her waist, thumbs hooked in the top of her cutoffs, fingertips skimming the swell of her ass as her arms lace around his neck then drift lower to mimic his own, drawing their hips together; he can feel the heat of her sex through her shorts and he's instantly hard.<p>

The few patrons seated in the quiet dive have turned in their stools by now to watch the lovely pair swaying dreamily to the langorous tune.

"Alright, I admit it. Not too bad," Violet sighs in mock-defeat, lifting her eyes to meet Tate's darkened gaze. The slight shift puts their faces back within kissing distance but instead of indulging in the taste of her mouth he gives her a cheeky grin and dips her backwards, one arm leaving her hips to close around her waist.

"Told you so," he breathes against her throat, his thigh wedged between her legs to keep them balanced.

She just laughs and rolls her eyes, one hand shackled around his bicep.

Then they're back upright and she's raising the stakes, turning her back to him with a wink and drawing his arms out to cross over her middle, covering his forearms with her own. Fit snugly against his chest, she resumes the teasing wandering of her hips, turning her chin against her shoulder to peer up at him from where he's moving behind her.

Not that he'd notice her eyes. He's far too focused on the way she's pressed into the circle of his arms, and more importantly, against the growing bulge behind his zipper.

"You're dangerous," he chuckles darkly against her temple, to which she replies with a more insistent snap of her pelvis, a snap that has his breath catching in his throat. He can't see her face, but he's sure she's smiling that mean smile and counting his gasp a small victory.

* * *

><p><em>Go ahead, go ahead and light up the town. And baby, do everything your heart desires, remember I'll always be around.<em>

* * *

><p>One of her hands leaves his then to reach up and curve around his neck, keeping him close, forcing his head down until his mouth is near her own. "We're just getting started," she says in a ragged whisper, her breath washing over his face, warm and inviting. But before he can crane his neck and close the disappearing gap between her lips, she's twirling out of his hold and putting a bit of distance between their bodies.<p>

He fights to keep down the disapproving growl that claws its way up his throat and lets her yank his hands back and forth in some mockery of the twist for a few measures. Her lips are quirked up in that cruel little grin and she bats her eyes at his obvious frustration, but saunters back into his personal space when his mood doesn't lift.

Okay, it's official. Violet is going to be the death of him.

"Hi," she smiles sweetly up at him, like she couldn't feel the outline of his cock brushing against her navel, like she wasn't going to be his one-way ticket to Hell.

"Hi," he exhales in exasperated fondness, one arm loosely curled around her narrow waist and the other limp at his side.

At this moment, no one else exists. It's just them and Mick Jagger in the dusty old bar. She's burning him from the outside in where her fingers are curved against his chest, where the sharp angles of her hips are cutting into his thighs, and where she's breathing against the round of his shoulder.

He wants to see her face, but then her lips start moving and he realizes she's singing the song to herself. Then he's just content to feel them ghosting over his crumpled shirt.

* * *

><p><em>Cause I got the real love, the kind that you need. You'll come running back, You'll come running back to me... cause time, time, time, is on my side... yes it is!<em>

* * *

><p>He can hardly believe she knows the song. It was written well before she was born, but then again, of course she'd know it. His Violet wasn't like the other girls her age. She wasn't listening to Katy Perry and crushing on the boys of One Direction. She didn't read Seventeen magazine and tear out the pages with beauty tips she thought she could use. She liked cigarettes and whiskey and listened to bands like Nick Cave. She survived the hurricane that is her parents and she wasn't afraid to go after what she wanted. It made him realize that it wouldn't matter to him if she was sixteen or thirty-four or sixty-four, it wasn't her age that attracted him. The forbidden aspect of the affair might have turned him on at first but it's <em>her<em> he's crazy about now, her laugh and her attitude and the fact that she's kind and sweet, even if she doesn't want anyone to know it. Who she is as a person is the stuff his fantasies are made of, not the age on her driver's license. The irony of the song choice becomes clear, the one thing that isn't on his side is time. If it were, she'd be eighteen and he wouldn't have to think about how he's going to have to cope with the time he'll have to wait for her to become legal so he can move her into his apartment and spend every free minute by her side. There isn't a doubt in his mind that he belongs anywhere else.

Fueled by this revelation that he truly didn't want her for her age and by the way she was writhing against him and maybe, just maybe, the alcohol he'd consumed, Tate sinks one hand into Violet's hair and pulls her head up from where it's resting against his shoulder.

There's confusion in her eyes at the quick gesture, but it soon gives way to lust as he tightens his fingers in her silken locks and lowers his face to hers. Her eyes drop closed and her lips part in anticipation, but he doesn't kiss her mouth. He traces the edge of her jaw with the bridge of his nose and breathes out a groan into her ear.

"What are you doing to me?" he whispers with barely any strength at all, resting his rough cheek against her own, their hips sliding to and fro in languid figure-eights. She shudders in his arms at the undertones of desperation in his voice. Her are fingers toying distracteldy with one of the buttons on his shirt, and then, suddenly, her mouth is upon his.

It happens so fast, her surge against him, that he can do little more than receive her kiss for a dazed moment, both arms winding around her middle. But then her tongue is pushing at his lips and sinking into his mouth and a wave of renewed hunger crashes against him. Suddenly it doesn't matter that people might be watching and it doesn't matter that what they're doing is 'wrong.' His fingers bite into her skin and, bringing up one hand to close it around her nape, Tate tilts her head to deepen the kiss, drowning in the violent buzz of his body as she melts against him. Her arms slip up to encircle his neck as their mouths work together feverishly and, the feel of her breasts pressed up against his sternum milks a heady whine from his lips.

She's edged up on her tiptoes and he's bent slightly to make up their difference in heights, but he knows already that this kiss is going to crown the greatest hits list of moments in his life.

"Tate?"

The sharp, disbelieving bark of his name slices through their private moment and, instinctively, he breaks their kiss to whip his head in the direction of the voice.

His breath catches in his throat and his eyes widen to the size of coins when his gaze lands upon the owner of that too familiar screech.

Hayden.

His ex-girlfriend is standing next to a lonely table with a spilt beer, and she looks _pissed. _She's wearing a loose knit sweater and a pair of dark leggings and her expression could be described only as murderous.

Fuck.

His mind reeling, wondering where she'd come from and how'd she'd known he was here and what the hell was going on, Tate looks back to Violet. Her eyes are bouncing between he and Hayden questioningly and already he can feel her slipping out of her hold. He lets her go, only taking her hand to whisper a quick, "just give me a few minutes," before she gravitates back towards Mark at the bar, her brow wrinkled in what he hopes is confusion rather than annoyance.

Buzzed in more ways than one, it's hard to put himself back together, but he does his best, flattening down his shirt and hair before leaving the empty space in the middle of the dive and walking over to where Hayden's seething in the corner.

"Hayden, hi," he sighs when he reaches her, reluctantly meeting her eyes.

"Don't," she warns through clenched teeth with a pointed finger, vibrating with irrational rage.

He lifts his hands in surrender and motions for them to both take a seat at the round table she'd been previously sitting at. After a tense beat, she releases a breath and nods, brushing the toppled beer glass onto the floor before pulling out the chair opposite him.

His eyes flick back towards Violet. She's trying to act like she's not watching him and failing miserably, a small scowl darkening her face.

He closes his eyes for a beat and tries to regain his composure. Why the hell did Hayden have to end up here, now? It's not like she lives in the neighborhood, and the dive they were in is pretty far away from the trendy hangouts she favors.

"How did you end up here, anyway?" he asks suspiciously.

"Don't worry about it. Who is she?" Hayden's voice is controlled but he can tell by the way her shoulders are squared that inside she's seething. She always had been ferociously territorial, screaming at him for transgressions like having the gall to make eye contact with the waitress that took their order.

"We don't have to do this," he sighs, dragging a hand down his face, "We broke up two months ago. We're seeing other people. It's _over._"

Hayden's lip trembles, but she smoothes it out with the flick of her tongue, wiping at her heavy kohl eyeliner. He knew she was volatile, but to seek him out here and go off on him for _dancing _with a girl, that was borderline stalker.

"I came to the wake," she says instead of making more demands about the blonde's identity.

The subject change is jarring, but he's come to expect her sporadic behavior and decides to just roll with the punches. The sooner he calms her down and gets her the hell out of here the sooner he can get back to Violet. Their song is long over now, but if he's lucky and she's not too pissed, he's sure he can find a way to make it up to her.

"I didn't see you there," he says, fiddling with a chunk of broken glass left on the table. If he had been dancing with any other girl but Violet, he wouldn't bother indulging Hayden at all - but if Hayden were to start asking around the bar about her, well, she does know who to call at the tabloids... it's not worth taking the chance over. Best to smooth things over and not let her walk away pissed and vindictive.

"Yeah, well, I was late. My GPS is a piece of shit - you know that - and I was fucking lost for most of the day. By the time I got there you were gone, but Constance was still there." She takes a wet breath and glances longingly at her spilt beer. "She's livid, Tate, says you just left in the parking lot."

"I did." He's without guilt on the matter. She deserved it, shit, she's lucky he didn't run her ass over on the way out.

His no-bullshit confession leads them into a stretch of awkward silence and when Hayden's digging through her purse for a cigarette, Tate turns back to scan the bar for Violet. She isn't there. Her stool is empty and Mark is cleaning glasses by the sink.

Fuck. Where did she go? Anxiety flares up his spine when he notices that her shot glasses aren't out any longer. He tries to quiet it with the thought that maybe she was just out back smoking, but doesn't really believe it. Deep down he knows that she's gone. He doesn't know what she thought when Hayden called him out, but whatever it was, it wasn't good.

How was she getting home? She was too fucked to drive.

Right then he wants to investigate, wants to race out of the bar and go find her, but Hayden reaches out and grips his hand, bringing his thoughts back to her.

"So," he drawls, searching for some conversation that might get rid of her. "Are you seeing anybody right now?"

She visibly brightens at his words, but wilts just as fast, drawing out a design in the wood grain.

"Kinda. He's married though." She rolls her eyes at that. "Won't even let me see his house. Always meets me at my apartment or some hotel. He says he's going to leave her, but I'm not a fucking retard." Hayden's eyes cut up to his in apology at her last words, but he just waves for her to continue, realizing that maybe she just needs to vent. Then he can leave without the threat looming of her ratting him out and chase down his Violet.

"Anyway, it's whatever. What about you? You gonna tell me about that girl or am I going to have to read it in the tabloids?"

He can tell by the tone in her voice that it's more tease than threat and lets a relieved grin spread across his lips. "Just some girl," he shrugs, but she knows him well enough to know when he's downplaying something. Surprisingly, however, she doesn't press him any further, just sighs knowingly, her spark of anger fizzling out.

"That's cool, I guess. She looks young."

"Huh? Yeah, I guess."

Fear prickles under his skin, but then he remembers that they're in a bar and that Hayden must assume she's at least twenty-one.

Then, before she can say anything else, her cell phone buzzes and when she clicks on the screen, her mouth quirks into a secret smile.

"It's _him_," she supplies, texting back at lightning speed, suddenly raising out of her chair and collecting her things. "He says he and his wife got into a fight. He wants to meet at my place."

Tate has a niggling suspicion that he knows who she's pining after, because, as it turns out, it's a small fucking world... and it can't be just a coincidence that she's in a random hole in the wall so far from her comfort zone. But he doesn't inquire, instead he too stands and throws out a twenty to settle Hayden's bill.

"Thanks," she sighs, adjusting her top. "Hey - do I look alright?" There's insecurity in her voice but a giddy anticipation too. She really likes this guy. Her outburst must have been more out of shock and frustration that she'd be losing her invitation to all the cool Hollywood parties and premieres than actual jealousy. Yeah, things between them were good for a while. The sex was great and she was spontaneous if nothing else, but they've both found better fits.

"Gorgeous," he nods, brushing her long brown hair back from her clavicles, trying not to let on to how anxious he is to get out of the bar.

She gifts him a grin and pulls him into a tight hug, planting a wet kiss on his cheek before drawing back and hurrying out of the bar.

"Goodbye, Tate! Oh, and sorry about your sister!"

She's out of sight moments later but before peeling out of the parking lot as well, Tate revisits the bar and knocks for Mark's attention. He turns, but his expression changes into something wary when he notices who's standing at his back.

"I know, I know, that looked bad," Tate groans, "but believe me, that's all in the past." The bartender nods grudgingly and reads the blonde's expression as Tate asks him where she went.

Mark considers him warily. "Violet's special," he says, frowning. "My wife and I care about her a lot. I know who you are, I've seen your show... If you just want a piece of ass -"

"I don't," Tate interrupts. "You're right, she is special. Trust me, if all I wanted was a piece of ass, I could have the chick that just walked out of here without any effort at all. I just want Violet, okay?"

"Okay," he says finally. "I'll let her know that you left if she comes back in here."

"God, thank you so much. Have a good night."

Rapping upon the wood in goodbye, Tate hurries then out of the double doors and into the cold, trying to shake off the weight of his buzz before climbing into the driver's seat and starting up the engine.

He's going to go home and he's going to find her.


	8. Chapter 8

Tate's drive back to his mother's house is infuriating. Having only stumbled upon the tiny dive by mistake coupled with the alcohol he'd consumed in the past few hours has him thoroughly lost in minutes.

Pausing at a stop sign in an unfamiliar neighborhood, he verbally abuses Siri and proceeds to chuck the iPhone into his backseat when she fails to understand what he's asking.

"Bitch," he mutters at the automated assistant, following a random string of cars that pass by out onto a main road.

The street signs are hard to read in his tequila haze and all he can think about is the last look Violet threw him before she disappeared. It was an unpleasant mixture of confusion, hurt, and anger. He just really needs to fucking find her.

When fifteen minutes later he starts noticing the same fast food signs lit up along the road, Tate pulls into an empty parking lot and, grumbling, climbs into his backseat.

"Siri, are you fucking listening to me?" He mashes the button and impatiently waits for the tone, feeling like a perfect asshole crouched alone in his backseat.

Halfway through her search for,"Directions to Murder House," his phone buzzes in his palm and the maps application disappears.

"Moira, what the fuck?," he snarls into the receiver after scanning the caller ID.

"Are you drunk?" Her voice manages to sound both professional and scandalized; he can almost hear her ruffling on the other end of the line.

"Christ, spare me the lecture."

There's a beat of silence, during which Tate downs an old bottle of water that's been rolling around under his seat for a month, and then she's sighing into his ear. "Fine. I'll let you go, but you're going to call me _first thing _tomorrow morning, aren't you, Tate?"

Tate rubs at his rough cheek and nods in the dark. "Yes, of course, whatever you say. Are we done?"

And then, because his agent can be really fucking testy, the line goes dead without so much as a stiff goodbye.

A tendril of thought spiders out in worry over what she'd wanted, if it might have been about the trial or a gig or something worse, but he's hopping into the front seat before it can hook him into paranoia.

He's hit then, fumbling to get his key into the ignition, by a wave of drunkenness and slumps against the wheel for a moment, counting each in-out of breath until he can see straight, or as close to it as he's going to get right now. Then, phone in hand, he peels out of the parking lot.

Green and red lights blur together as he follows Siri's directions home towards Violet, and if he weren't so anxious to clear things up with her, he might be worried about getting pinned for driving under the influence or into a fatal accident.

* * *

><p>He pulls, finally, onto his old street a pathetic forty-five minutes after leaving the bar.<p>

Violet's going to be furious. She's going to want to know where he's been and whether or not it was with Hayden. And he's going to explain; everything's going to be fine.

But her cadillac's not at the sidewalk. The dried puddles of oil were bared to the night.

A thrill of freezing terror races through him at the sight of the empty gutter.

"Violet?" he calls out, driven by the fear that she's gotten herself killed on the way home. She'd had too much to drink. She shouldn't have been driving.

He's out of the car like a shot and hardly registers how much force he'd put into closing the driver's door, already halfway to her front gate.

It's locked, but he hurdles it easily, crossing her yard to snatch up a pebble from the bushes.

"Violet?" He's unaware of how loud his voice is right now, hopes it's enough to wake her but not enough to rouse her parents, and lobs the rock at her closed window.

It clacks against the pane and he steps back into the low halo of light from the streetlamp, staring up expectantly at her roof. If anyone saw him now, perched outside a high school girl's window, it would all be over for him, but right now he just can't find it in himself to care. He's too drunk and worried and eager to see her, eager to continue what had started at the bar.

Swept up in remembrance of how she'd felt slipping and squirming against him to the lazy tune, he forgets for a moment why he's standing in the grass and his shoes are wet.

But then he's looking back into curtains that don't shift or bunch inside her tiny hands as she parts them to peer down at him.

It's quiet outside.

He can hear the sound of his heart thumping away inside his chest, trying to hack its way out.

She isn't home.

_Fuck. _

The same fear from before is back, only now it's crippling. He paces a crooked oval into the lawn and pulls at his hair, wishing he had some way of calling her.

Where was she?

He imagines her tipped upside down in her car, blood leaking down her brow. He imagines her old beater wrapped around her tree. He imagines her stock still with a tag on her toe in the morgue. He imagines her like he's just seen his sister today; gone.

Feeling light-headed, vaguely aware that he's on his way to hyperventilating himself out of consciousness, Tate folds down to sit on her porch steps and lets his head sag between his shoulders.

"She's fine, probably just went over to a friends," he rationalizes, muttering to himself, his hands smoothing up and down the tops of his thighs until they're sore from the abuse. But that does nothing to calm him. Jealousy flares up then to twine with his fear and he has to ball his fingers into tight fists to quiet the tremble that his new visions incite.

His buzz has been overshadowed by, first, anger and now, worry, both of which are beginning to twist together into something ugly now. It creeps onto his face as time stretches on and, still, she doesn't appear.

* * *

><p>A half an hour later, still holed up out front in the dark, Tate's almost hoping she's gotten hurt, because the alternative makes him want to break things. And he'd already made a silent promise to himself that he'd never hurt her, a promise he may have already broken.<p>

He waits and waits, scrolling through his phone, replying to a few texts, and, of course, just when he's about to throw in the towel and hop back over the fence to his own yard, the telling rumble of an old car winds up the road.

It comes to a stop just out front of her house and Tate thinks his heart might actually burst from his chest when he sees her mass of blonde hair whipping through the wind.

He pushes up onto his feet, drags a hand over his face to clear any trace of tiredness from his face, ready to step out into the light and call her name, but stills with his foot hovering just above the last step.

The tiny hairs on his nape prickle when her giggle floats through the air, elated to find that she really is alright, but then the all-consuming need to harm blankets every sense of rationality because it's then that he realizes she isn't alone.

Stepping out of the passenger door and looping around the front of her car to let Violet out is _some fucking guy_. He looks like he's in college, a twenty-something, and when she's out of the car he's got an arm slung around her waist.

It's like someone's pressed a hot brand against his brain. He forces out a breath through his nose and gnashes his teeth, stepping back into the dark as he falls victim to the monster that lies dormant under his skin.

Watching her look so goddamn carefree, letting him spin her in circles in the street, swaying to the music that's pouring out the rolled down windows of her car, Tate bites into his tongue until it bleeds. What the fuck is she doing? Doesn't she know that he's been waiting for an hour for her? Doesn't she want him still?

He's shaking with the need to make his presence known, but somehow manages to hold back, pressing his nails into his palms, creating eight matching welts before long, tiny crescent moons that weep in his fists.

This dirtbag's got his hands on her hips. Slowly, he's guiding her backwards until the backs of her thighs hit the front bumper. Her giggles fall away as he lays her back against the hood and cages her in with his arms. It's unbearable. Tate's ground his teeth down to stumps. His mouth is full of blood and so are his hands.

Fingers flitting around his jawline, she mumbles something with a little smile and arches up away from the rusted metal. The last thing Tate notices before he moves is the guy's hand curving around Violet's throat and tipping her face towards the stars as his mouth descends upon her own.

He doesn't actually catch their kiss, is busy sprinting through the yard and clearing the fence in an elegant leap that's telling of his track career in high school when their lips meet.

The next thing that registers is a startled scream and the satisfying crunch of fist meeting bone.

Whoever the fuck's been mauling Violet buckles and clutches at his face, dazed, staggering out into the street.

"Touch her again, and I'll fucking kill you," Tate's growling, teeth bared as the guy with the broken nose shakes himself out of his stupor.

Someone's calling his name, screaming it from somewhere behind him, but he turns his head to look just in time to get blindsided by a clumsy bouquet of knuckles. They make a clean split of his lower lip, which promptly begins oozing blood. He tries to swab at it with his tongue, but gets distracted easily, laying into Violet's fucktoy with a manic sense of joy, delivering punch after punch until he's cowering in the road with both arms held around his head. But Tate isn't done yet. Any sense of right and wrong has been cleansed from his mind. He's running on fury alone. Smiling dangerously, teeth more red than white, he looms over the crumpled boy and draws his fist back in preparation for another beating. He won't stop until the kid's dead. Something inside him, something he's powerless to, won't let him.

But he never does get to throw that last bunch. Before he's got it wheeled all the way back, Violet's suddenly there in his face, grabbing his fist in her tiny hands and pushing it down.

"Tate! What _the fuck _are you _doing?_" she screams, frenzied, shoving at his chest, forcing him back from the guy who's clambering onto his feet and limping just as fast as he can away from the two blondes fighting under the streetlamp.

The sight of her, of the hurt and anger shining in her eyes, saps him of a slice of his anger, enough that he allows her to continue pummeling away at his sternum. For a while anyway.

When he's had enough of her flailing, he snatches her wrists out of the air and tosses them out of his space.

"What am I doing?" He sounds amused and for a split second there's a smile on his face, a mocking, joyless smile, but then it's gone and his face darkens into something terrifying. "What the fuck are _you _doing, Violet?" The idea that that prick might have recognized him and could be gasping into a pay phone somewhere, selling his story for a brand new nose, doesn't even cross Tate's mind. He can think only of those roaming hands and of that kiss.

"You could have killed him! Are you _fucking_ _crazy?_" She's glaring up at him in the yellowed light, a bundle of white-hot anger with both arms folded over her middle. But for once he doesn't find her pout endearing.

"Yeah, I guess so. Stupid too," he nods coolly, lifting his eyebrows and taking a menacing step towards her when she takes one back. "I didn't think you were '_the type'._" He knows it's too harsh as it's leaving his mouth but can't quite wish that he'd reeled it back in. He's hurting and he's drunk. Tact isn't up there on his priority list right now.

But if he wanted to piss her off, his cutting words have had the desired effect. With a wet huff that proves she isn't made of stone, she's back to pushing violently at his chest with grit teeth, doing her best to curse him out of sight.

"You. Fucking. Asshole!" Each word is emphasized with a shove. She's spitting mad and he can't decide whether it's because he hurt her friend or because he's essentially called her a whore just now. Either way, she keeps assaulting him with soft little fists until he pipes up again.

His voice is quiet and controlled when he speaks, but stretched tight with the effort of it. "His hands were all over you, Violet..." The note of betrayal's still there, but it's been diluted with hurt. He can't stop replaying the way she'd raised up to meet him for that kiss, like she was so goddamn eager.

She draws in a shaking breath and lifts her face to defiantly meet his gaze once more. Tongue peeking out to wet the vicious smile that's back on her face, she leans in close like her next words are a secret, teasingly batting her eyes when the taunt is out of her mouth.

"I liked it, I was gonna let him _fuck me_."

Tate visibly recoils at her words, shakes his head that, no she wasn't going to, and braces both hands against the top of his head to keep from coming undone again. He knows that she's trying to deal him the hurt she'd felt at Hayden's entrance, but it still feels like a spear to the gut all the same.

Her eyes glitter maliciously at how her words tear at him and continues corralling Tate back until he's got nowhere else to retreat, the wrought iron fence digging into his spine.

When she opens her mouth to continue, both little palms are resting against his ribs. They burn through the front of his buttondown like they had back at the bar, but it's torturous now. She's torturing him.

"Yep. I've heard he's got a huge cock. Told him that I was hoping he'd use it to split me in half when we were dry-humping just over there. Said he could even put a fing-"

Before she can say anything else that might ruin him completely, Tate clamps a hand over her mouth to silence her and flips their positions in a quick spin, crowding her back against the fence now. His body's thrumming with overwhelming amounts of hurt and anger, and if she wasn't Violet he'd consider putting a dent in her face.

Instead he just presses his thumb and fingers into her cheeks until he can feel the innuendo of the sides of her teeth against his prints.

"Stop," he urges quietly, staring down at her with pleading eyes, fighting her wriggling with one arm. "I don't want to hear anymore."

But she must not be over the fact that he'd just broken that stupid fuck's nose because instead of wilting and nodding her head, she watches him with dead eyes and licks at his palm when it flattens over her lips, apparently keen to torment him for the rest of the night.

His own lip is bleeding a stream down the front of his chin that is leaving tiny drips of evidence all over their fronts and the sidewalk.

This isn't a game. Things weren't supposed to happen like this. He was going to find her and explain things and ask her to spend the night next to him in bed again. How did they end up here?

When she stops trying to squirm out of his hold and releases his forearm, Tate lowers his hand from her mouth and pushes out a frustrated exhale.

"Violet..."

"Fuck you. Or did your _girlfriend_ already take care of that at the bar?" Her knee-jerk response is a feral snarl, but before she can duck under his arm and sprint down the road after her fried or into the house, Tate's already trapping her in again.

Anger and hurt are warring within him right now, but when she still refuses to relent and let him explain, the former dominates his next actions.

Looking first left, then right, then up at both their houses, Tate checks to be sure that they're alone before pressing one broad palm over Violet's sternum to keep her still and leaning in to whisper with the same malice she'd shown just minutes ago.

"Is that all you're after, Violet? Someone to fuck you silly?" His lips are right at her ear and with his weight boxing her in, she's got nothing to do but huff out little breaths of irritation, both hands wrapped around the iron bars at her sides.

The monster's back, still hungry even after messing up pretty boy's face, and with what's transpired over the last ten minutes, he makes no effort to reel it back in. He closes his teeth just barely around Violet's cheekbone, thrilled by the quiet whine that leaves her, and the hand on her chest trails lower. "Because _I_ could fit _that _bill too, you know."

His freshly stubbled cheek burns against her temple, his warm breath dancing in her hair, but even with how rough he's being and how cruel he's been, she still arches against him when his fingers graze over the skin below her navel.

The rasp of fury in her breathing softens into short gusts of air that lap against the exposed triangle of skin at the base of Tate's throat; it's maddening, but it means that she _likes _this. It seems her mood's been turned by his boldness rather than his words, but perhaps the use of both might clear what's happened between them.

"She didn't mean anything," he promises after a pause, in a ragged whisper, his lips brushing over the curve of her ear on each syllable. His fingers are skirting along the tops of her shorts then and what little breath Violet's had left dies then and there in her lungs when he deftly pops the brass button and parts her fly. "Just an ex that'd been surprised to see me. You shouldn't have left."

The crickets and frogs along with the faint whoosh or cars passing through nearby streets are the only encroaching noises outside of their own breathing. So when Tate's fingers sink down over Violet's mound to cup her through her underwear, their coordinating sighs rest heavy in the air between them.

Unable to pinpoint when he'd first stepped onto this path towards damnation, whether it was when he'd sucker punched that guy from earlier or days ago when he'd first laid eyes on the pretty young thing with the heart-shaped glasses and the old junker car, or maybe even way back in high school when he'd drawn up plans to mow down his entire school, Tate knows only that now, when he's running one slender finger along the seam of Violet's sex and she's tipping her head down to watch, that there's not a sliver of guilt tainting the moment.

"Jesus, Violet, you're fucking soaking for me," he groans in a gritted drawl, barely holding it together at this point. His spare hand's clamped around her shoulder to keep her from moving even though they both know she wants this, and she's beyond the point of feigning mad. Prodding against her entrance through the thin cotton of her panties, his finger slipping over its dampness, he rears back enough to catch her expression as her mouth drops open and her eyes shutter closed.

She whines out his name and arches up into his palm, craving more, _needing _it. And he's going to give her exactly what she wants, but not yet. That kiss on the car is still plaguing him.

"You weren't really gonna fuck him, were you?" His fingers pause from where they'd been beginning to rub sloppy circles over her and he catches her chin in his other hand, lifting her eyes to meet him, suddenly serious.

Eyes that are all pupils now bounce between each of Tate's when they find the strength to peel open, and then she releases a staccato breath and shakes her head. "No..."

He plucks at her bottom lip and grins as the weight's lifted, resisting the urge to kiss her then, settling for the way his heart soars at the admission. It had been a game afterall.

"Good." He rewards her with a quick peck on the corner of her mouth, but lifts away his face when she turns hers to meet him for another. Sighing in displeasure, she instead swabs at the dab of blood he's left behind.

Then he's bowing his head to suck a path of kisses down her neck and out onto her shoulder, pulling away the strap of her tank top and bra, dragging his teeth over the bone of her shoulder and leaving a traceable smear of red along the way from the cut on his lip.

With two fingers he teases touch up the seam of her thighs where the cotton barrier ends, barking for her to keep her hands where they are when she tries to lift them away from the iron bars to grab at his shirt.

Violet complies, but not without a threatening, "then fucking _touch me_," tacked onto the gesture.

Okay, enough tormenting.

Brushing his lips across the curved bone of her clavicles, Tate's spare hand splays up her throat and around to sink into her hair, thumb pressed at the soft spot just behind her ear.

"Alright, kitten. You win," he grins against her skin, drowning in his own lust but concealing it as best he can, for now, until she's mewling and crying out and he can take her apart with more than just his hands. His mouth waters at the thought.

The age of consent is the farthest thing from his mind when his fingers drift back up over her mound before finally dipping below the elastic waistband of her underwear.

The first thing he notices is that she's bare, not even the slightest scratch of stubble snags under his fingers when they smooth down the front of her. Did she shave for him this morning? He can picture her contorted in the shower with a razor, revelling in the idea that she'll be beautifully shaved under her frumpy funeral clothes when she sees him at the wake. The next is how they both tremble when he grazes that little button of pleasure before slipping down into her folds.

Everything about her is always a surprise, she's proven it again and again, but he's still a little shocked when she doesn't give him a hissed expletive or a low grunt in response. A small, breathy, "_Ohhhh," _tumbles from her lips and he grins, reveling in the fact that she's a moaner rather than a screamer. The first soft moan is followed by a second and he watches mesmerized, as all of her carefully constructed walls crumble in front of him. She's bold and ferocious in her day to day life but here, now, is where she's vulnerable, where she lets herself go.

It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

And he realizes he wants to bring her to this point every day for the rest of his life.

Her hips follow his hand, moving in greedy little jerks, trying to pull him inside, and with a little huff of laughter, he obliges, filling her with two fingers, pumping them in and out at a langorous pace. But It isn't enough; with a frustrated sigh, she brings her own small hand between them and presses his palm more firmly against her sex so she can drag her clit over his calloused skin.

"Tate, oh fuck, _Tate_," she pants, writhing against him with impatient need. His hand is starting to cramp but he wouldn't stop for anything, not when she's so close. He can feel her fluttering around his fingers, right on the brink. It only takes a little coaxing to push her over.

His name on her lips like this is the closest he's even been to feeling God's love. He'd be content to drown in the sound of her voice.

Another thirty seconds and a soft groan is bleeding out against his throat as Violet's thighs start to quake and she cums around his fingers in violent spasms, her eyes rolling into the back of her head as she slumps back against the metal gate.

But he doesn't relent then. He keeps pumping, hoping to coax another orgasm out of her when her eyes flutter open, wanting to bring his hand to his lips after and taste her.

But it proves too much for her. "Tate, stop. Stop," she whines, pulling his hand away. Without her heat around his fingers his other senses come back and he realizes what she's apparently just figured out by the way she's glancing furtively from side to side - he's on the street with his hand down a teenager's shorts.

If he were a better man he'd stop there, go to his room, jerk off, and pray to God that nobody saw him.

He's not.

And the half-lidded stare she's giving him, along with the fact that she's brought her hand between them to gently brush along the shape of his cock through his slacks, lets him know that she's not even remotely interested in ending the night just yet.

"Inside," he growls. But before she can even think about turning her bones back from rubber, he picks her up and throws her over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. She's light as a feather in his arms.

Squealing his name in playful protest, Violet reaches down to slap his ass as he carries her across the lawn and up his mother's front porch.

"Will your mom hear us?" he hears her ask, voice muffled in the back of his shirt as he carries her up the stairs.

"She's passed out by now, she wouldn't hear a fucking freight train," he assures her, turning his head to bite and suck at the exposed skin of her thigh next to his face, making her squeak and wiggle.

Once up the stairs, he kicks the door closed behind them as they enter his room and then gently rolls her down off his back and onto his bed. "I'm gonna get some water," he murmurs, folding down over her to push the hair out of her eyes. "Do you want anything?"

She shakes her head slowly, a small smile playing at her lips from where she's stretched out across his mattress..

"Be right back," he murmurs, and darts from the room.

He doesn't really need to rehydrate, he just needs a fucking minute to clear his head from the haze she's got him trapped in. He stumbles to his bathroom and splashes cold water over his face, staring at himself in the mirror.

His buzz has been swapped out for aching want.

"If you do this, there's no going back," he says seriously to his reflection, elbows propped on the edges of the sink. Not just because it's illegal or because it could potentially mean the end of his career if anyone found out. There's no going back because somehow he knows that if he has sex with Violet it's going to ruin him. He's going to want her forever, and nobody else will be able to satisfy him. It's a vulnerability he's never faced. The exposure both unnerves and excites him.

He'll leave it up to fate. He'll give her one last chance to back out, and as much as it would kill him if she walked he'll accept it and promise to leave her alone.

Satisfied that he's rid himself of what jitters he can, he walks back to his room and opens the door to find Violet sprawled out on his bed and staring at him like she wants to devour him whole, looking like every wet dream he's ever had in this room as a teenager. "Are you sure you want to do this?" He asks in a small voice, meeting her eyes, both hands jammed in his pockets, knowing that he should be praying for her to say no but is really doing just the opposite.

She doesn't respond at first, just blinks up at him with doe eyes, and then a slow grin begins working its way across her face. Then she's pushing up into a sitting position, folding herself forward to kneel on the bed, and reaches down to pull her tank top and bra over her head in one fluid motion. It lands somewhere next to his desk by the wall, but he's too preoccupied with how her eyes are glittering to notice.

He was already hard as a rock but the sight of her breasts, perfect little porcelain swells bared to

him, just for _him,_ pulls all the blood in his body away from his brain and directly into his cock. He's so focused on her pointed pink nipples he can barely hear her when she whispers her answer. "Hmm, what do you think?"

Well, fuck.

Helpless to smother the sharp smile that streaks across his face at her words, Tate pushes out a breath like a laugh and walks forward, ready to meet his damnation head on.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: **You guys, we are so sorry we've made you wait this long! With work and school and allergies and sickness, we just haven't had time or motivation to get this chapter written and we didn't want to give you something half-assed. But I just finished with finals yesterday and **Scarlettwoman710 **is finally getting over her nasty cold and we're back!

So here you go, after a way-too-long wait! Again, we're sorry and we love you.

Enjoy!

* * *

><p>Hooking both hands behind her knees, Tate drags Violet in until her bottom teeters at the edge of the mattress. They're sporting twin smiles and he's standing between her open legs, the calves of which have coiled around the backs of his thighs; she's not one for passiveness.<p>

Laid out flat against his bed, she lets him drink in the sight of her, bare from the waist up, tummy and ribcage swelling with each eager breath.

"Fucking perfect," he mutters, smoothing his palms up and down the underside of her thighs, coiling forwards slowly with each motion, caught up in his admiration and disbelief that he's actually got her here with him, that he could even have a chance of keeping her. She rolls her eyes at that, but he can see her faint blush until it's snuffed out by darkness when she twists to shut off the lamp on the bedside table.

It's dark in the room but the moon outside sits full and heavy in the sky, setting everything in crisp moonlight and shadow.

"There. Now, c'mere." Violet's voice is softer in the dark, pulled crooked by a smirk, and before Tate can oblige, he feels a little hand curling into the front of his shirt and is yanked impatiently forwards.

Huffing out a laugh at her neverending boldness, he toes out of his shoes and folds down to cover her, crawling onto the bed when she scoots back up towards the pillows. He's careful not to crush her, props up on one elbow, mapping out the slight bumps of her ribs with a broad hand.

"Are you sure?" he asks again, blinking down at the way her face is cast silver in the dark, the prolonged distance between their mouths becoming a nuisance.

Her smile fades and she reaches up to touch his face, to round one cheekbone with her finger, to brush over the corner of his mouth.

Something shifts. The air softens around them. His heart hurdles a few beats and she presses her bent knees against his hips.

"Hey, relax," she murmurs, arching up for his hand when it wants to disappear underneath her. He traces down her spine and warms the small of her back with his palm. "I'm sure."

And that's all he needs to hear. It's all there in the gentle want of her voice.

He leans in to kiss her, eager to taste her again - it's been too long, since that dance at the bar what feels like months ago. It's not her mouth that he aims for, however. He wants to know how every inch of her skin feels underneath his lips, against his tongue, wants to taste the subtle differences between the skin of her breasts and the backs of her knees, wants to map out each dip and every curve. He bypasses her pout and lowers his lips to her neck, nibbling down the edge of her jaw and sucking red blooms into the thin satin covering her throat. He wants to mark her, wants anyone lucky enough to see her exposed flesh to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she belongs to him; it's sick, but he needs this, especially after that he saw her with that fuck back at the car.

Little hands are working feverishly to unthread the buttons of Tate's shirt and when it hangs open at last, he shucks out of it, pushing it over the edge of the bed to join her discards. Then he's covering her once more, hungry for the slip of being bare together, letting loose a rough sigh when their skins are melded shoulders-to-hips.

He slots perfectly between her bent legs, narrow hips bookended by the cream insides of her thighs. Her perfect tiny breasts are pressed up into his ribcage. He can feel the stutter-thump of her heart.

"Jesus, Violet," he groans, eyes shuttering at last as he ducks down to continue burning a trail down the column of her throat, along her clavicle, sinking ever closer to the swells tipped with petal-pink points arching up for his attentions.

"Tate," she whines, this back and forth of their names just another reminder that what's happening is real. She claws at the bunched muscles of his back and he douses her suffering by finally, finally wrapping his lips around one nipple, flicking at the hardened bud with the tip of his tongue, clamped onto it with his teeth.

This new tier of intimacy has a moan bleeding out between Violet's gusted breaths, a soft and delicate noise so in contrast to her usual course bravado. He knows then, one of her hands sneaking between them to knead at herself over her jeans, that he was right, that there is no going back, because he can never live a life that doesn't include time spent with Violet's soft skin writhing against his own or coaxing these soft sounds from deep within.

Her hands are everywhere, restless. They dive over the planes of his back, sharp nails piercing his skin as rolls her nipple under his tongue and skate up his arms, fingers dipping over the muscles when he switches breasts and roughly palms the first.

"Pants off. Now," she barks in a torn whisper, yanking at the fly of his pants.

His eyes slit open and he grins cockily up at her, but instead of reaching for his own waistband, bats back her hands and reaches for hers, shifting into a kneel. She protests, but its nothing more than empty threats, and in practiced speed he's got her shorts peeled open in seconds.

Wetting his lips, he spares her one last questioning glance before looking back to where his fingers are hooked into the hem of her shorts.

Seeing nothing but darkened want staring back at him under the moon, he's got both her denims and her cotton underwear down other her hips and thighs and finds his gaze trapped at the apex of her thighs.

Unlike most girls, Violet doesn't try to close her legs and hide from him, she kicks out of the last of her clothes and blinks up at him with wide bent knees.

"Jesus," Tate exhales, taking in the sight of her, fingers itching at the material of his thighs, suddenly starved for her.

He could look at her forever and never get enough.

Hair a mess over her shoulders, skin glowing in the light from the window, a seductive smile playing at her lips and the shine of want already glistening on her perfectly bare slit, she looks good enough to eat.

And that's exactly what he plans to do.

Snapped out of his stupor by toes nudging at his arm, he blinks Violet back into focus and folds over her once more, leaving soft kisses down the lean length of her stomach, gently nibbling at her skin as he descends towards where they both want him most. His teeth and tongue work over her in a slow tease, grazing her sharp little hipbone and clamping down on the crease of her thigh. Never taking his eyes off of her, he marks his way down her body until he's poised directly above her core. They heady, fresh scent of her fills his nostrils and just before his face drops down, he catches the first hint of shyness flit over her features; it's gone, replaced by something even sweeter, at the first slide of his tongue between her folds.

Unsealing her, eyes fighting to stay open and to smother a groan that surfaces from the taste of her dripping over his lips, Tate pushes her open with his hands and laps at her swollen, sensitive clit

A slow rhythm builds, his mouth closing around her, tongue wriggling against and pushing inside to fuck her. Soon she's lifting her hips to meet him with every thrust, her pubic bone knocking against the tip of his nose at times. He chuckles against her, shackling her hips in his hands and tugging her back to him. He presses obscene kisses to her sex until she's shaking, until her legs are draped over his shoulders and her toes are curling against his back.

Her hands thread into his hair, tugging gently, coaxing him. "Tate... fuck, _Tate. _Please..." she's moaning, grinding herself against him as he pins her pelvis to the bed with a firm hold.

"Please what?" he taunts, lifting his head to find her eyes, slitted and swallowed black.

"Fucking make me cum," she whimpers. "_Please._"

Her pleading feels like a fist to the gut, but in the worst way. Groaning, he ducks back down, tongue delving between her folds. Her fucks her with his mouth for a while, but when her breathing batches he shifts to wrap his lips around that tiny bundle of nerves, placing on it steady pressure. Her hands curl into fists, tugging at his scalp, and her thighs twitch and shake against the sides of his face. A minute of carefully tracing the alphabet over her clit later and she breaks with a tortured mewl that reverberates through him and straight down to his cock.

A minute of body pulses later, she lies below him, boneless, and with a satisfied smirk stretched across her face.

"You're really fucking good at that," she teases, tracing his swollen shining lips with the pad of her finger. "I'll _consider _allowing you a repeat performance."

Tate laughs. "I plan on it," he nods, nipping at her finger affectionately. "You're mine, Miss Harmon."

Her smirk opens up into a full-tilt smile and she leans forwards to brush over his lips with her own, tasting herself.

"Yours," she agrees, nuzzling into his neck. "I'm yours."

He doesn't know if she knew that how much he longed to hear her say that, if she knew how much he got off on the idea of possessing her completely, or if, against all odds, she really was perfect for him and longed to be his, but no matter the reason, hearing Violet Harmon agreeing to be his makes his already hard cock swell to almost painful proportions. He can't shove his pants past his hips fast enough; he's still yet to claim her.

Jeans a crumpled heap on the floor, he crawls back over to her, only to flip over onto his back at the urging of her hands against his chest. She's quick to shift into a naked straddle over his thighs, fingers fluttering immediately down to skirt along the waistband of the only material still keeping them apart.

"Would you have really killed that kid if I didn't intervene?," she asks in a quiet voice, watching his face carefully.

Tate bristles at the sudden change of subject and sighs, hands smoothing up over her knees to rest at the creases of her thighs and hips. He knows who she means, the guy from earlier.

"Probably." He could lie, but what would the point be? She needs to know now that he isn't going to play into the kind of shit she pulled tonight.

Violet stares down at him, her expression guarded, but after letting his response sink in, begins fiddling with the button holding his boxers closed.

"Violet..." Tate warns, squeezing at her thighs, his hips rolling upwards against her backside. He's barely keeping it together as is, for her, but once he feels her tiny fingers curling around his cock, all bets will be off. He might not be able to stop after that.

The same question is on his tongue again, about whether or not she really wants this, but Violet must sense his stubborn hesitation because when he inhales for speech, she decisively covers his mouth with her hand whilst simultaneously popping open his fly; she's snaked inside to feel him before he has a chance to counter.

"Woah..." she muses to herself as she finally maps out the shape of him with her fingers, squirming a little at the way Tate's breath rushes out so heavy and hot against her palm.

She shimmies back to sit closer to his knees and slowly pulls his cock through the gape in his boxers, eyes glued to how it bobs free, curved up towards his navel, flushed and perfect like a porn star's.

He watches her appraising him from over her knuckles, one hand wrapped around her wrist without any real threat. She drags a nail up the underside and circles the head, hers tilted in curiosity.

She's teasing him and for the first few minutes it's cute, this little exploration she's got going on, but soon he's nipping at the undersides of her fingers and wrestling against himself to keep still.

"Violet..." His whine is muffled under her hand, but her taunting grin says that she's heard him.

"Yes?" she coos sweetly, batting her lashes and lifting away from his mouth. "Something wrong?"

He echoes her earlier whimpers, desperation dripping from every syllable. "Please, Violet," he pleads, his eyes crinkling as he squeezes her wrist hard enough to bruise.

"I like it when you beg," she purrs cheerfully, her smile hidden when she folds over to lick a sudden stripe up the underside of his cock.

And just like always, the tables have turned. She's got him by the balls, quite literally. Her little hand strokes and teases them as she pulls the swollen head between her lips with a wet sound. He'd never expected tit-for-tat from her, has already resigned himself to the knowledge that he'd give her anything if only in hope of hooking her for himself, so this is all bonus. He groans from somewhere feral deep in his throat, and despite his desperation to keep still for her, begins rocking forward with each slip of her tongue.

"Jesus, have you ever - I mean if you're not. It's fine," Tate babbles into the dark, his spine and abdomen flexed so that he can watch her; Christ, he can't take his eyes _off_ her.

Whatever he's said, one of his half-sentences, must have been hilarious, because Violet abandons his cock, his lap altogether, really, and rears back in peals of laughter.

"You think I'm. Some precious. Little girl," she squeals between fits, hiding her face, giggling through her fingers. "What the fuck, Tate!"

She's still indisposed when he rolls to one side and out of bed, is too busy clutching at her sides to even notice him until he's pushing her over and flipping her when she falls against the mattress, yanking her by the ankles until he's standing between her legs at the edge of his bed.

"Are you done?" he asks with a pointedly raised eyebrow, regripping the outsides of her thighs when she rests her heels in the bends of his elbows like she's just getting comfortable, like she isn't gifting him a sinful view of her bare cunt.

She contains her giggles, but not her smirk, and folds her arms over her chest. "Yep, it's just funny."

"What's funny?" he asks without looking at her, distracted already, nipping kisses down the top of her foot and the inside of her calf to keep from staring and drooling at the mere sight of her.

Violet squirms a little closer to the edge of the bed, until her tailbone is right at the curve of the mattress and peers up at Tate's face, and his cock where it's hardly hidden in his unpinned boxers.

"That you think I'm a child."

"You are a child."

"No I'm not. You know that."

"Hmm."

"I've fucked other guys before."

His voice is hard-edged. "Now really isn't the time, Violet."

She pulls her foot from him, withdraws her leg until her knee's bent up against her chest so he can't touch her anymore.

"You don't have to treat me like some fucking china doll. I'm not gonna break, and I know what I want."

Tate pushes out a frustrated sigh, wondering if she's always this volatile - if they'll always be fucking or fighting - , and lifts his eyes to find her staring at him with a hardened expression.

"I know."

She dares him with the flash of her eyes, slowly traces out her bellybutton with one finger and bumps against his fronts of his thighs with the bottom of her own. "Show me."

Her words are the pin on a grenade. He can almost hear his resolve, like a dam held tight too long, shatter. She's right. He's got to stop pretending she's innocent; she's not. If she was this would feel all wrong. He wants her because she isn't a little girl, because despite her age she functions on his same level, she can challenge him. Like a real life grown up, she's got a level head and a heavy heart, but he can fix that. He wants to try.

Nodding in acceptance of her challenge, the coil in the pit of his stomach wound tighter, tighter, tighter, he shifts until his cock's pressed right up against her center and helps her wind her legs around his waist. Her heels find purchase at the small of his back and she lifts her arms up over her head to rest in loose bends. She blinks up at him with dark eyes and full lips, with white teeth peeking through her sighs, his for the taking.

And like a gift from the gods, he'd be damned to refuse her. Swallowing a thick knot he hadn't noticed forming in his throat, Tate takes himself in hand and nudges against her entrance, watches her eyelids flutter and her hands turn over to grip at the sheets.

"Violet." He'll never get tired of saying her name. This time it can't be called a whisper, just a reverent breath, but she's not having any of his sentimentality. "Shut up," she whines, hunger thick in her voice as she squeezes his hips and tries to pull him inside.

He doesn't make her wait a moment longer, couldn't stop himself at this point even if he needed to. Kneading the outside of her thigh, he presses insistently forward, jaw clenching through the initial embrace of her body, eyes fisting shut at how unbelievably tight and warm she is inside. He doesn't still, and neither does she for that matter, until he's buried within her to the hilt, and even then she holds him there, with her feet dug into his back, unrelenting.

Their breath leaves them in shudders at being joined at last and for a long moment neither of them move. It takes her a moment to grow accustomed to his size, to the initial burn that follows the stretch, but in the end it's her that moves first. She curls up to press one hand flat against his belly, just below his navel over the trail of dark blonde hair, and shifts her hips up towards him.

"Move."

Tate's breath shakes with silent laughter at how she's already become the boss of him and he bends just enough to take her hips in his hands. Then he's drawing out of her with a hiss only to slide back inside until he's fully seated once more.

They do this for a while, just exploring the way they feel together, working as one, marveling how easy their hips roll into sync, how the push-pull of their bodies make them feel dizzy, like they're high only better. So much better.

Already his muscles are tense with want for release, but he isn't near ready yet. He could spend weeks inside her skin and it wouldn't be enough.

"Fuck, you feel good," he groans, head hung loose between his shoulders, sweat on his face and in his bangs. He takes quick peeks of her squirming up towards his invisible weight, but can't handle more than that. He can still hardly wrap his mind around how he deserves a girl like her in his bed, can't remember the last time he'd had anything close.

Violet, usually silver-tongued and mean, is without words. It's only sounds she gives him now, breathy half-moans, a bitten off gasp when he shifts and bears down on her clit, shallow sighs and peaked breaths. They pour from her in the dark until he can't stand the space between them, until he's helping her shimmy back up towards the pillows and folding down on his knees to kiss her. It starts slow, just the open-mouthed joining of their lips, both too distracted by the new angle and closeness to do much more than breathe raggedly into one another. But then Violet's letting Tate pin her knees against her chest and she's hooking her legs over his shoulders. Then they're frantic together, restless mouths and hands, just a mass of limbs and friction and the creaking of bedsprings.

Her tongue fucks into his mouth in some semblance of what he's doing to her. She bites until his lips are torn and leaves hot red lines down his chest and back. It's vicious. The force of his hips bounce her against the mattress, his hands keeping them trapped against the sheets, his lips tasting of his own blood and her smile.

"Jesus, _fuck,_" he groans into the curve of her throat, speeding towards his release, sure that she's right there with him, baring his teeth when she rakes hers over his jaw.

It's the best sex he's had in years and if he weren't all kinds of distracted, he'd be jealous that he hadn't gotten to her first, that she hadn't somehow known and waited. But he's not that guy right now. Right now he's being shoved off and climbed on top of, right now he's being manhandled by the girl he loves.

Straddling his lap, Violet wastes no time in getting him back inside her, sinking down onto him with a wet sound and bracing herself with hands on his chest.

"You don't get to have all the fun," she pants, her hair stuck to her cheeks until she combs it back and away.

Tate just keeps quiet, loathe to admit that this definitely qualifies, content to cuff her hips and let his head fall back against the pillow. He's still got his boxers on and he wonders if they're rough against her ass, but then she bleeds out a low groan and he couldn't care less.

She rides him like she's got something to prove, with her head thrown back and her nails curled into his flesh, with her mouth open and her eyes shut. Every shove of her pelvis jostles the headboard, but his mother's out cold and even if she barged in now, he'd still let Violet finish.

He's hit with wave after wave of pleasure and, aware that he doesn't have long, twists up until they're both sitting, her in his lap, his arms wrapped tight around her back. He bows his head to tease one nipple and fucks up into her each time she slams down.

Finally, she speaks, spitting tiny, angry 'fuck, fuck, fuck's against his temple as her toes curl inward and she flutters around him.

Recognizing that she's right there on the edge, Tate tips her backwards and hammers into her, elbows bookending her face, sweat covering the both of them. All at once she stiffens in his arms, twists her face into something akin to pain but just the opposite, and comes around his cock with a broken cry.

Her body clutches at him in rapid spasms, causing his hips to stutter and his breath to cease all together and before she's even sunk back into the mattress, boneless, he's coming too, like a shot. Her name tears out of his throat, torn and guttural, as he shakes over her, muscles wracked with shudders.

Everything behind his eyelids goes impossibly bright. He can't hear the crickets outside or Violet's breathing or anything at all. It's like his whole body reboots and for that split second he's not really alive or dead.

When they're both spent, Tate slumps off to one side, and turns his face against the pillow to look at Violet, one arm still draped over her middle.

The silence they find themselves in is wonderfully light and easy, both content to simply _be _for a while.

"That was..." he starts when his breathing's approaching normal, admiring her profile through heavy eyes.

"Yeah."

Blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes, she covers his arm with hers and sighs.

His mind's a formidable haze of emotions, but through it he realizes what he forgot and starts to panic, but she speaks before he can get too worked up.

"Don't worry, I'm on birth control," she says with a flippant wave of her hand, turning to offer him a cheeky smile. That's when he knows he's done for, when there's no hope of every crawling out of his. He's hooked for good.

"Mmk."

Instantly calmed, he speaks more to the pillow than her, stereotypically sleepy in a post-coitus daze. It's been a tumultuous day to say the least and sated with her by his side, it's not long before he's drifting into unconsciousness.

But not before he feels a shift on the bed and Violet sidles up next to him to whisper, teasing and victorious into his ear.

"I can't believe I just slept with _The _Tate Langdon."


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: **First of all, we would just like to say thank you so much to everyone who reads this fic, and reviews it, and messages us about it. You've all been so wonderful to us.

We're finally nearing the end! Two more chapters and then we'll be closing the book on this Tate and Violet.

Thank you for reading and enjoy!

* * *

><p>Like a bucket of ice down his back, Violet's word drag him from sleep's embrace. His heavy lids snap open and his entire body tenses into fear-frozen alertness.<p>

He stares at her with too wide eyes, bewildered, propping up onto one elbow to get a better look at the girl curled in his sheets that might have broken everything.

When he speaks, his voice is calm and measured in the sharp silence, but his pulse is climbing.

"What?"

"You heard me," she coos without missing a beat, rolling up onto her side, both hands folded together under her cheek, the picture of innocence. Her big doe eyes are watching him with an open curiosity.

Time stops.

There's an explosion somewhere deep in the back of his skull, he thinks the force of it might even jostle his head forwards; he can't feel much of anything right now. He just waits. For her to say something. To crack a smile, _anything_.

When she doesn't, when he realizes that this is actually happening and not some cruel nightmare, a hundred different emotions wrestle for place in the colosseum of his chest cavity, hurt and anger among them in numbers.

He watches her, but he doesn't see.

She knew? This whole time, she knew?

His arm recoils from her belly like he's been burned and before he can help it, his hands have curled into white-knuckled fists, the bones look to be in danger of bursting free of his skin. It doesn't take much time at all for his bitten nails to have torn into the crease of his palm.

"What?" His mouth is moving again, forming the same useless question, but he's no longer a part of this scene. He's somewhere inside his own mind right now, too busy watching his blueprints for happiness combust. He's trying to expel his feelings for Violet all at once as though they were a poison he might be able to sweat out if only he tried. And they were, weren't they? In the end.

This had all been a game to her; Violet just wanted to see if she could flirt her way into fucking the hollywood star next door. Her friends probably knew what was going on. _Jesus, _maybe she _had _gone to the media, or was at least planning on it.

Tate's so wrapped up in nursing a mental breakdown over ten tiny words that he doesn't notice Violet's moved and is straddling him until her little hands are violently smacking him in the chest.

"What the fuck?" she's yelling, and at first he can only see her mouth moving, can't hear anything outside of the deafening ring in his ears, but then, when she starts yanking at his shoulders, trying desperately to wretch him up into a sitting position, his haze marginally clears.

She sounds angry, but frantic too, her eyes wide, pupils tiny pricks of black against soft brown, and it's then that he realizes he's having trouble breathing. His asthma must have kicked in sometime during the breakdown, there's an invisible weight on his chest and each breath he takes has been mangled into a gasp for air.

"Hey! I was joking, okay? Just joking," she cries out, both arms flapping wildly at her sides, but is momentarily placated when he sits up against the headboard and blinks her into focus.

Her hands don't leave his chest, but she ceases with the crazed beating, lets them lie in open curves over the thump of his heart. They hold one another's stare for a long moment, then, swallowing down whatever cruel thing had been there at the tip of her tongue, Violet sighs, a long and tired sound, and wets her lips.

"I mean, of course I know who you are. I don't live under _a rock_!" Tate's fear spikes. "I've seen you on some magazine covers and on tv once or twice, my mom watches your show, but I don't give a shit that you're rich and famous."

He feels the spasms in his lungs cease and with a stuttered sigh, air move freely down his windpipe. "You don't?" He breathes with only a little stagger, trying to settle his racing heart, trying to tamp down the chaos in his mind.

"Of course I don't," she bristles, clearly offended, but with the wind out of her sails now. He can still see the hurt there in her eyes. "Christ, If I was just a starfucker I would have tried to get you to make a sextape, or at least," she tosses her hands in the air once more, "I don't know, take some pictures to sell to the tabloids or something."

Initially skeptical, he watches her face wearily, but when all she offers him is a raised brow, he wheezes out a laugh. "Sorry," he says awkwardly. "It's just..."

"Sore subject?"

"You could say that," he says, shrugging, coughing slightly and then shifting down the headboard to lie flat against the mattress once more. Violet heaves a dramatic sigh and flops over his torso, resting her chin on his sternum and giving him her best 'I'm listening' face. "In this business it feels like everybody wants something - tickets to parties, getting their picture into a magazine, meeting big-time actors, or even just straight up cash. You never really know who you can trust."

Her brow wrinkles. "So why do it?" she asks. "If you hate it, quit. Get a different job."

He explains to her how all of it - the bullshit, the in-crowd, the paparazzi, the fame - is all part of the deal of being an actor... and he really, really loves being an actor. He tells her how his first role led to the parties which lead to introductions to producers which lead to "dating" an actress for six months because he needed to get his name out there and she wasn't ready to come out as a lesbian yet. It was all sucking Hollywood's dick and paying his dues but this job, this next job, could get him serious Oscar buzz and, if he was lucky, fuck you money.

"Fuck you money?" she repeats with a head tilt that makes him want to kiss her pout.

"Yeah," he laughs. "It means that you've got enough Hollywood currency - money in the bank, A-list status - that if you don't want to do a project you can say "Fuck you" and walk away. It's the freedom to say no to shitty rom-coms and pick only the projects you really want."

"And if you get fuck you money, what projects would you like to do?" she asks, interested.

He shrugs. "I don't know," he mumbles, somewhat bashfully. "Indies, maybe. Films, not just movies, you know? Ones that make you think, that make you actually _feel _something." He brightens. "Plus, it would mean I could stop making the rounds at parties and shit, going to Vodka launches and club openings. That alone would be worth it."

Violet nods seriously. "I hate all that fake bullshit," she says disdainfully. "All this fucking town cares about is appearances and being seen, even if you're not famous. Makes me miss the East coast."

When it seems like he's through talking, she nuzzles into his chest and changes the subject. "Tell me about you," she urges gently. "I told you my life story at the bar. It's your turn."

He smiles and presses a kiss into her hair. "Not much to tell that you can't read in Us Weekly or on Wikipedia."

"Bullshit," she chides. "I want to know about _you. _Like growing up with Constance. What the fuck was that like? She's a trip."

For the better part of an hour he tells her about his life, the condensed, slightly edited version anyway - she doesn't need to know that he suspects his mother of killing his father or how he came close to mowing down half his gym class in eleventh grade.

He tells her about growing up inside the house where she now lives, about how he spent most of his time alone in the basement, about how he used to (and still maybe does) think there were ghosts down there. They figure out together that she's living in his old room. She asks where he caught the acting bug and looks appropriately sour when he tells her it was more or less forced upon him by his mother. She gets the sparknotes version of how Constance is a truly terrible bitch, his explanation for why he didn't visit home often. Coaxed, he laughs his way through his first sexual experiences and only has to pinch at her sides a few times when she begins cackling too loudly.

She demands story after story, has a follow-up question for each answer, and only when Violet phone buzzes to life on his bedside table are they pulled out of their reverie. Huffing irritably, she bends over to retrieve it, her face glowing with the light from the screen.

"You're lucky," she grins. "That was the guy I was with earlier. He wants to know who the 'fucking asshole that broke his nose' was. Apparently he didn't recognize you."

Relief washes over Tate in crisp waves. "Thank fucking Christ," he groans, rubbing his eyes wearily. "That's the last thing I need right now."

"Then you probably shouldn't have beat the shit out of him," she scolds. "I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself."

Indignation rises in his throat like bile. "I hated watching him touch you," he growls, hugging her tightly against his chest. "I wasn't joking earlier. You're mine."

She pulls away slightly to look up and into his eyes, her face turned somber. "Tate... we can't be together. You've got to know that, right?"

He closes his eyes, preparing himself, jaw clenched.

"How old are you, really?" he asks slowly, afraid of the answer, but knowing already in some capacity.

"Seventeen. But I'll be eighteen in three months, right before I graduate."

He exhales slowly, a steady column of air. It's a blow, hearing her say it out loud, but nothing fatal "That's not so bad," he says, relieved. He opens his eyes to find her own downcast as she worries the sheet covering them in her hands, teeth caught onto her lower lip. In that moment her balls and bravado have been stripped away. She's the same shy, nervous girl she was when she pressed her soaking panties into his palm. It makes his heart swell and his cock throb.

"What?" he asks, cupping her chin in his hand, begging for her eyes.

"Wait for me?" she mumbles, looking anywhere but where he wants. "I mean, after I graduate, I'll be legal and everything, if you want to really try this-"

He cuts her off by capturing her lips in a firm kiss, pouring every emotion he's felt over the last few days and is feeling now into the press and slide of their mouths. "You just better wait for _me_," he says breathlessly, once he can bear to put a fingerbreadth of space between them. "If I see some other guy touching you again, I'll fucking kill him this time. I'm serious, Violet."

He face breaks into a brilliant smile, like he hadn't just promised murder. "Really?"

"Definitely," he reassures her, rising up and rolling to blanket her lithe little body, careful to keep from crushing her. "It's three months, not three years. I think I can handle_ three months _of celibacy. With any luck I'll be busy on set in Europe anyway."

Her eyes slide closed and she gives him a slow, teasing smile. "Well then I better give you something to remember me by," she purrs, arching to meet him and wrapping her hand around his the base of his freshly interested dick.

"Violet," he groans, thrusting into the circle of her fingers, their conversation forgotten.

"Yes?" she grins, her eyes wide and innocent as she strokes him to full hardness.

"You have no idea what you fucking do to me," he sighs, voice a low rasp, reaching between them to seize her hands and lift them up over her head. He holds them there between his thumb and curled fingers and uses his other hand to quickly line up their bodies, feeling her slick for him all over again, wanting.

"Oh I think I do," she pants cheekily, arching up into the space between them and working her hips in a slow circle. "But you could always show me."

Unable to stifle a shudder that ripples up his staircased spine, he groans somewhere deep in his throat and buries his cock in her throbbing heat in one harsh thrust, losing himself inside her once again.

* * *

><p>The sky outside his window is shifting from an inky midnight to a deep purple, heralding the dawn when Violet releases a petulant sigh.<p>

"I better go," she says ruefully, disentangling their legs and drawing out of Tate's hold. "I don't want either one of our respective parental units to wake up and find out where I am."

His skin aches at the loss of contact, her warmth ripped from him. "When will I see you again?" he asks, lurching up to lean back against his headboard and watch her dress.

"I thought I'd come to the funeral," she says, tugging up and fastening her shorts. "Maybe after it's over we can talk? Figure out how we're going to do this?"

"Okay," he agrees with a nod. "We've got people coming over after - Constance wants to have a reception or some shit - which should make it pretty easy to sneak away. She'll monopolize all the attention, nobody will even notice I'm gone."

"Good."

She slips her tank top over her head and smoothing it down, leans forward to brush her lips over Tate's for one last taste. He cranes his neck for more when she draws back, twin smiles creeping onto both their faces, still giddy from the night's events.

"Get some rest," she murmurs, fingers trailing down his bare chest, playfully circling one nipple. "Tonight's your last night here, and I plan on making sure you don't spend one minute of it sleeping."

He wraps his arms around her, loathe to let her go despite the knowledge that he must, and pulls her back into his lap for one last kiss, a kiss that will get them through the next twelve hours. "Tate," she moans, pulling herself away. "If I don't leave now, I never will, and then we'll both _really _be screwed."

Groaning, he relents and releases her. "I don't want to fucking do this," he says darkly, glancing over at the black shirt and tie hanging from his closet door. "I'd much rather spend the day in here, with you."

She looks at him and senses his dread for the emotional event, sees the need for reassurance in his eyes. Her gaze sweeps over the room and settles on a marker abandoned in an empty can on his old desk. She snatches it up and crosses the room back to where he's lying still, grabbing for his hand and forcing open his palm.

"I wish I could sit with you and hold your hand, but we both know I can't," she says, biting the cap off the sharpie and pressing the point into his skin, speaking with her mouth full. "But every time you need me, just look at this. Pretend I'm there."

He looks down at his hand to see a crude heart drawn over the lines in his palm, the bottom formed into an exaggerated V with a tiny H in the center.

He feels a lump rise in his throat at the sight.

"Thanks," he says hoarsely, lips turned up at the corners despite himself. She just grins in reply and presses a quick kiss to his palm before darting across the room for the door.

"Violet," he blurts as her hand closes around the handle; she spins around to look at him, expectant.

He bites his lip to keep the "I love you" already formed clearly in his mind from spilling over. It's too soon. Fuck, he's crazy.

"I'll miss you," he says instead, leaning back against the pillow.

Pressing her forehead against the edge of the door and peeking shyly at him through her bangs, she feeds him a soft, "You too," and with one last longing glance disappears out into the hall, leaving him alone to ponder just how he's going to make it through the next three months without her.

* * *

><p>Addie's funeral was precisely the reason that Tate had tucked the vial of coke into his duffel bag (well, that and having to suffer Constance for a long weekend). He had planned on spending the entire morbid affair stoned out of his mind. In the past, large amounts of drugs had been the only way Tate could deal with anything of an emotional nature. Problems with Constance? Get fucked up. Didn't get the callback? Get fucked up. Trouble with a girlfriend? You guessed it. After a hit, nothing seemed quite so dire. The funeral of his only sister would have been the type of occasion that necessitated narcotics, however, when it was time to leave for the funeral parlour, Tate had taken one glance at the Sharpied tattoo on his palm and promptly dropped the rest of his grade A coke right into the toilet.<p>

Violet makes him want to _feel_ things again. She makes him want to experience life, the good and the bad. She makes him want to stop burying his emotions under layers of anger, cocaine, and Jack Daniels.

In short, she makes him want to be a better man.

And he couldn't be more grateful.

As he sits next to his mother, trying to ignore her phony sobs, he alternates between staring solemnly at his sister's closed coffin and stealing glances down at the heart drawn into his skin, curling his fingers inward as though he could feel her small hand in his, warm and soft against his calluses. Violet's here, he saw her come in earlier with both parents and knows that she's sitting a few rows back on his left. He'd like nothing more than to drag her into the very back and disappear against her side for some comfort but it's impossible, he can't, and for now, simply knowing that she's there is enough.

The pastor wraps up an overly flowery sermon with some predictable bible verse and motions for Addie's family to stand. Reality sinking in, that his baby sister's funeral is over and that she's never going to climb up out of that box, Tate's eyes fill with tears that he furiously tries to blink away. They stick to his lower lashes and cloud his vision but they do not fall. He had already taken a private moment with his sister prior to the funeral, but this would be the last time he would ever be in the same room with Addie. His heart breaks for her, his funny, kind, beautiful sister.

She would always be a pretty girl to him.

Walking down the aisle, allowing Constance to thread her arm through his, but only just barely, he catches Violet's eye. She gives him a small smile and it takes every ounce of strength he has left not to crawl over his gay hairdresser, Chad, and his brooding partner, Patrick, and carry Violet out to his car and this entire filthy fucking city.

The second he tastes fresh air, the sun bright and overbearing, he's digging into his pocket for a cigarette. Soon, he's got one sandwiched between his teeth and is frantically patting down his pants in search of his lighter when a Zippo suddenly flares to life not six inches from his face.

He leans forward to catch the flame and, pulling the nicotine into his lungs, looks around for the source.

"Moira," he says, surprised, shading his eyes with his spare hand. "I didn't think you'd be here."

"Well, we've got business," she says in a voice that should sound far more dangerous. "You didn't call."

He's dealt with his agent long enough to know the signs. She's bouncing forward on the balls of her feet and chewing her lower lip like it's her last meal. Whatever she has to say, it's good news.

He turns his head to exhale and notices Violet waiting for her parents a few feet away just out front, eyes wide and gaze fixed. "My agent," he mouths to her, winking, nudging the air in Moira's direction with his cigarette. She grins and visibly relaxes as Tate turns back to the firey redhead.

"Out with it," he says after another drag, keeping hope from blooming in his chest just yet. Smoke leaves his nostrils in twin spires. "If it's something that has you all the way out here, it must be major."

"Oh, it's major," she confirms, unable to hold back a toothy grin that gleams like dollar signs. Tate's breath hitches. "This past weekend the director of that World War II flick _Follow Me Home_ wandered into his screening room while his daughter and her friends were having a viewing party." Tate gestures irritably for her to get on with it. She just shoots him a glare.

"Tate, they were watching your show."

"Fuck," He groans, dragging a hand down over his stubbled cheeks. "Well, there goes that part."

"Not quite," Moira says, absolutely bubbling. "The girls _loved_ you. And the more the director watched, the more he saw that there's more to you than a pretty face" She takes a deep breath, eyes glinting with savage triumph, and reaches out to pinch at his cheek. "He offered you the part, Tate. He doesn't even need an to audition."

"Bullshit," he hisses, teeth pressed into the filter of his cigarette, grinding it in half. But deep down he knows Moira's not the type to joke about work-related shit.

"This is it, Tate," she says seriously, gripping him by the arms and jostling him slightly to drive the point home. "You're going to be a huge fucking star, baby."

Tate barks out something between a sob a laugh and pulls Moira into a massive hug, still shaking with disbelief. Over her shoulder, he can see Violet's face. She's overjoyed for him, her lips curving up a beautiful smile, white teeth peeking through. "We'll celebrate tonight," she mouths to him with a little wiggle, and the promise of all the sexual depravity to come makes his cock twitch against his thigh.

"So," Moira starts, regaining her composure after Tate releases her, smoothing out her skirt, "Here's the catch. We have to leave now."

Tate's brow wrinkles in confusion. "_Now?"_

"Now," she repeats with a nod. "He wants to make sure he can start filming at the beginning of Spring in Ansouis. Rehearsals start tomorrow, in New York, and in a week you'll be flying to the south of France. I booked your flight to New York, your plane leaves in two hours, so if you want to get through security we have to leave _right now_. I'll give you a minute to say goodbye to your mother."

"I don't give a fuck about my mother," Tate waves her off, his head still swimming. It feels like the ground under his feet has shifted, as though gravity itself was affected by this news. "Moira, I don't have any clothes, I have to pack - " his voice drops, "and I have the trial, remember?"

Her eyes flash triumphantly despite his sour expression. "That's the best part, Tate. The director's so ga-ga over you that the studio fronted the cash to settle with the pap that's suing you. He's even going to sign a gag order. The whole thing is going to go away, all of it, out of the papers. It's beautiful." She chuckles. "Gotta love Hollywood, right?"

He's relieved that he doesn't have to go through the mess and bad PR of a trial but it's only a petty concern, a means of distraction. The real reason he can't leave in two hours is standing behind Moira, looking like her heart is going to burst free of her chest and right into the sewer.

"Moira, I can't leave right now," he whines pitifully, grappling for a plausible reason that might stall their departure. "I just left my sister's funeral, for Christ's sake!"

Her eyes narrow. "Now you isten to me, Tate Langdon," she sneers, a finger edging into the center of his chest, sharp nail pressed right against his sternum. "You have waited your entire fucking career for a break like this. This is it, your last fucking chance, you got that? If you screw this up, I quit - but don't worry about that. Because if you don't take this job you'll have flushed any chance at becoming a real actor right down the fucking toilet. You'll be lucky to book a fucking used car commercial!"

Scowling at her sudden venom, Tate just pushes his hair out of his eyes and lifts up his hands in surrender. "Jesus," he says wearily. "Calm down." Over Moira's shoulder, Violet's waving to catch his attention, a stolen cigarette in her spare hand - clever girl. "You have to go," she mouths, giving him a broken smile.

He sighs, feels something somewhere within his ribcage grow painfully heavy with the knowledge of what this means. "Fine," he concedes with a grimace, squinting the sun and Violet's frown out of his eyes. "Can I have a minute? Say goodbye to my family?"

He doesn't really give a shit about his family, but if he can sneak back into the funeral parlour he can at least have a minute to tell Violet goodbye properly, with a kiss and a promise and all that. He needs that last minute with her, something he can hold close to his heart in the time they're apart

He's mentally patting himself on the back for his ingenuity when he hears the telling sound of his mother's heels coming to fuck up his plan

"Say goodbye?" she purrs, stepping up behind him, long fingers curling possessively over his shoulder. "Why? Where are you going, Tate? We've still got the reception. I promised a few people I'd introduce you."

"Tate's been offered a role in a major motion picture, Mrs. Langdon," Moira says disdainfully, making Tate smile in spite of everything. Moira hatred of Constance nearly equals Tate's, in large part because of an incident at an after party early in his career that ended with Constance "accidentally" squirting lemon juice in Moira's right eye when she'd banned the mad woman from a meeting with one of her biggest clients. She was blind in that eye for a week, it never did heal quite right.

"Oh my stars!" Constance squeals, smothering Tate in a forced embrace, her voice carrying over the entire parking lot. "I'm so proud of you!"

She showers him in kisses and congratulations, and if it were any other son and mother, it might be endearing, but this is a selfish act. Already Constance is figuring what news like this gets her; bragging rights, sympathy, maybe a little cash.

When the show's over and she's released Tate, but is still reverently rubbing the wrinkles out of his jacket, Moira catches the empty stare in her client's eyes and clears her throat.

"Alright, I'm sorry but we really must be going."

Tate silently thanks her and catches a wink when Constance looks out into the crowd to see who's heard _their _news.

Constance tuts, but after placing one last kiss upon Tate's wincing cheek, she relents. "Okay, I love you. Don't forget to call me with all the details!" she shouts, fading back towards the circle of her bridge club. "My big movie star!"

Tate can't help sticking out his tongue like an unruly child and mock-gagging himself, drawing a cruel giggle from Moira, who is already ushering him towards the car.

"We're going to be late, hurry up, hurry up," she's rushing, waving him towards her company car in the parking lot. Tate blindly follows her before he remembers a pair of soft brown eyes.

"Violet!" he hisses to himself, head whipping back in the direction of the parlour. Frantically, he scans the crowd even as Moira pushes at the top of his head, urging him to fold down into the passenger seat.

Just before he drops down he spots her, threading out front of family and friends to where he can see her better.

Even though her parents are nearby and his mother isn't more than a few feet off, she's waving wildly and giving him her biggest smile, high up on her tippy-toes.

His heart goes wild in his chest, jumps against the front of his ribs, tapping out her name in morse code and, using the car door for leverage, he pushes to his feet. He didn't think it possible but her grin grows, dazzling and genuine and nothing at all like the mean smirk she lets sit across her lips when he's not around.

"I'll wait," he mouths slowly, with his heart in his throat and the beat of it loud between his ears. "I'll wait."

He's got her face burned into the insides of his eyelids the entire ride to the airport and his ink-stained palm pressed close against his chest where she belongs.


	11. Chapter 11

The first month is easy.

She misses him - oh God, does she fucking miss him - but she still has the memories of his tongue between her thighs and the way he had tucked her into the empty curve of his front after he'd cum, how he'd cradled her in his arms like even a sliver of space between their bodies wouldn't do. She remembers how broken he'd looked as he'd driven away, way his lips worked around the words, "I'll wait," like a far-away caress.

She remembers his kindness, his humor, his passion, and it's enough.

The days blur together, threaded with thoughts of him She starts watching reruns of his show with her mother, snacking on popcorn as she stares dreamily at the screen. Her parents think she's developed a puppy-love crush after meeting Tate at the wake, they call it "cute".

They have no idea. It's not a crush. She's in love with him, truly, madly, head over heels. Dumb fucking _girly_ love that's consumed her, eaten her inside out until she feels like little more than a husk with him gone.

She's young, she knows, but this is the real thing. It's forever. Who's to say that love at first sight isn't real? It fucking is, she knows. She feels it, heavy and cloying, a constant ache in the middle of her chest. If Tate asked, she'd marry him in a second. She can feel it in her fingers, under her skin, inside her bones. Even her very soul wants for him, if such things exist. In bed, late at night, she can feel her heart whining for him, a whisper like the beat of a drum.

_Tate. Tate. Tate._

She finds herself staring at his house sometimes, questioning if it all really happened or if those pills Leah gave her were something more colorful than codeine. She's got no proof, no love letters (or their twenty-first century equivalent: text messages) to reread for comfort. She doesn't have a picture of them together. There's no trinkets given as gifts to turn over in her hands as a worry stone, no pilfered t-shirt to curl up in at night. Hell, she can't even _talk _about it with anyone, lest he get arrested or have his career ruined. The only proof she has that he's real, are the love bites on her breasts that fade to pink and eventually disappear altogether. When that happens, she has nothing, only the memories of the way his breath had rasped against the shell of her ear when he'd said she belonged to him.

She remembers what he said about her house, how it's haunted. Pfft. The very idea is ridiculous. Ghosts aren't real. But sometimes at night, while she's lying in bed, Violetthinks she hears children laughing, and she _knows_ that she saw a blonde woman in a dated dress disappear into her basement. She could deal with that, if that's all it was, but there's something else, too.

The voices.

They creep into her head when she's staring out across the lawn, into his empty bedroom. They tell her he used her, that she'd imagined his attraction and devotion. They tell her it was all a game, that she was being foolish, stupid.

It would be enough to make her crazy if she couldn't still imagine his teeth at the edge of her throat Her memories of Tate are what push the voices into silence, and she's happy again, if only for a while.

Vivien's happy to share her crush on the beautiful boy next door with her daughter, cuddled on the couch while the show from his younger years plays. One night, after one glass of wine too many, her mother gazes at the screen and licks her lips dramatically. "He's just so fucking _gorgeous," _she slurs, grinning dopily at her daughter.

The speed at which Violet's ferocious thoughts arrive surprises her. _"Mine," _she thinks possessively. "He's _mine."_

And then instantly she calms, because she remembers he is. He _promised._

And for the first month, it's enough.

* * *

><p>The second month is harder.<p>

Vivien comes home from the market waving a copy of People magazine. "Violet, you'll never believe it!" she exclaims, shoving the pages into her daughter's hands.

"Mom, I don't care about this shit," Violet tuts, wrinkling her nose and turning away.

"Just _look,_" Her mother presses. "That actor, Tate Langdon. He's in the news!"

That's the magic word. Violet snaps instantly out of her funk. Her eyes sweep over the pages hungrily, searching for his messy hair and dark eyes, heart wedged in her throat. This is what she needs, something to remind her that he's real. When she picks him out of a collage of famous faces, she almost wishes she hadn't.

His new movie is big news, huge in fact, considering the sheer star power concentrated in the film. The supporting actors are well-known, some with Golden Globes and Oscar nominations to their names. The cast seems close, spending nights at bars in the sleepy little town in France where the movie's being filmed. The photos are all candids, snapped by the locals, pictures of the smiling actors, drinking beer and laughing as they hold up playing cards stuck to their foreheads with spit.

That in itself wouldn't be upsetting. She's thrilled to see him happy, that he's finally going to get the recognition that he deserves, that his castmates seem to adore him as much as she does. What makes her heart bottom out is the picture of Tate cuddled close to the actress playing his love interest, holding their beer mugs up to clink for the camera.

She's a rising star, the new IT girl, not famous for partying or dating another celeb but for her acting chops alone. She was nominated for an Oscar when she was thirteen, continued acting as she worked her way through Yale (where she graduated Magna Cum Laude), and has gone on to make all the right choices as her career has progressed. And if that wasn't enough, the cherry on Violet's shit sundae is that she's absolutely fucking gorgeous, with blonde hair, green eyes, and breasts that would spill out of any man's hands.

She's perfect. In every goddamn way.

And she's young; twenty-one.

(Violet knows how Tate likes 'em young.)

She looks down at her own chest, eyeing the nearly flat expanse inside her shirt wearily. Violet's never suffered from low self-confidence but this is enough to give her a complex. She's beyond threatened. What does she have that can compare? Nothing. She's a nobody, some teenager that he'd met at the most emotionally trying time of his life. He was vulnerable and she was there, a distraction. Hardly the best way to start a relationship.

It wouldn't be so difficult if she could just _talk_ to him. If she could hear his voice, she'd feel a hundred times better. He'd reassure her that the beautiful, famous, brilliant, not to mention critically acclaimed, actress meant _nothing _to him. Then she could stop worrying and they could have phone sex and plot every little thing they were going to do to each other the second his plane touched down in L.A.

She races home every single day to check the mailbox, hoping for a letter at the least. He doesn't have her phone number, but he has to know her address, right? Fuck, she'd settle for a postcard. Every day her hopes crest on her walk home from school. Every day she winds up disappointed.

The memories of their bodies pressed together don't burn so bright, anymore.

And those voices, - the voices of fear and doubt and self-loathing - they get louder every day.

* * *

><p>By the third month, Violet's lost faith all together.<p>

She spends hours locked in her room, trolling gossip blogs and searching for any tidbit from Tate's movie that she can find, a hermit gone mad. They're nearing the end of filming now, and the word on the set is that Tate's hope for Oscar buzz isn't unwarranted. The people closest to the film say he's incredible and that this role is going to make him a household name. The film will be in post-production for awhile, but the press blitz has already begun. The producers have high hopes and have lined up interviews for the cast, eager to get the film and their new star into the limelight as soon as possible.

She watches each and every interview. She hangs on every word, listens to his drawl, the boyish excitement evident in his voice. He's overjoyed to be getting recognition and his sincerity as he discusses how he believes in this project and the director drips from every single word.

The camera loves him.

So do the reporters.

And based on what she's seeing on the internet, everyone wiht a pulse is catching Langdon Fever too..

He's famous, full blown famous, she thinks one afternoon, and realizes then that she must be nothing more than a notch in his belt.

She's stopped checking the mailbox for letters weeks ago. A letter's not coming, she knows. She still wants to believe that he's waiting for her, but the conviction that was so strong before is hanging by a thread.

Her last hope is her birthday, even though she never told him exactly when it was. He's got an assistant now, someone that could google her or lurk her facebook or hire a fucking private investigator to find out the specific date. She's praying that he'll send flowers or chocolates. Hell, she'd even settle for that damn postcard she wished for a month ago. She just wants _some_ acknowledgement that she's finally legal and that they can start their relationship, for real, the second she walks out of her high school for the last time.

Her eighteenth birthday dawns bright and sunny, in perfect contrast to the storm raging inside. Her parents surprise her with cinnamon rolls for breakfast, but she can't find it in herself to eat. She accepts their offer to take her to Disneyland for the day only because she hates the person she's become - the kind of girl that waits by the phone for the guy, like some pathetic sap, like she's worthless without him. Fuck that.

_Fuck that._

That's not who she is.

And that's not who he fell in love with, if it's even love at all. Right now, she doesn't think it was. She thinks she was a distraction, a game, a toy.

But a small part of her still hopes she'll come home to a dozen roses on her doorstep.

When she stumbles up her porch that night, sunburned and sleepy, there's nothing to greet her. No flowers, no present, no birthday card - not even that stupid fucking postcard.

Nothing.

She climbs the stairs wearily and wrenches open her laptop, basking in the soft hum and the glow from the screen. She checks her facebook, smiling at the chorus of insincere "Happy Birthday" greetings from her classmates, and after checking her email and waging an internal war for the hell of it, she finally gives in. Her cursor hovers over the US weekly site that she had embarrassingly bookmarked three weeks prior. She scrolls endlessly, but sits up straighter when she notices a new video has been posted, an interview of Tate and his female co-star taken on the red carpet of a Paris release party for another film.

They're all smiles as they talk about their gig, the challenges of shooting a war movie, and how "incredible it is to work with such _talented_ and _wonderful_ people." Their bodies are close, too fucking close, and it makes Violet's stomach twist.

Then the bomb drops.

"And how do you two get along?" The interviewer teases, gesturing to the pair with her free hand. "Is there a budding romance on set?"

Tate and his co-star look at each other and grin. She makes an obnoxious kissy face and he laughs.

"Nah, we're just good friends," Tate assures the interviewer.

"_Best_ friends," his co-star confirms, smiling warmly. And then he drapes an arm around her shoulder, and because she's a fucking life-ruiner, the girl snuggles in and leans back into his chest.

Violet can't watch anymore.

She slams the screen shut and wipes at the angry tears that she hadn't noticed pooling in her eyes. Friends. _Best _friends. What _bullshit. _Their body language couldn't have screamed the opposite any louder if it tried. Of _course _he was fucking her. Why not? She was gorgeous, and she was famous, and he could fuck her and kiss her without worrying about ruining his precious career. Violet had never meant anything to him, nothing at all.

What a fucking joke.

The voices sneer in triumph. _See? So easily replaceable. A movie star, physical perfection personified. How could you ever hope to compare?_

Easy, she thinks. I can't.

Her eyes settled on the stack of envelopes next to her laptop. Acceptance letters from colleges all over the United States - Boston College, the University of Texas at Austin, NYU, University of Miami, and of course, UCLA. No college or city had sounded particularly enticing, so she'd yet to confirm a choice. However, in the last three months, UCLA had moved to the top of the pile.

Her heart heavy, she picks the letter up off the table, neatly tears it into confetti, taking a sick pleasure in the deed, and throws it into the trash.

When it's little more than confetti, she releases a ragged sigh.

She feels like she's forty fucking years old, not eighteen.

Well, fuck that. Not tonight. It was still her birthday for another five hours.

She angrily strips out of her clothes, flinging them in various directions around her room. With a choked sob, she digs through her closet until she finds the shortest pair of shorts she owns. She doesn't bother with a shirt, just ties on her bikini top. It's not like she has to follow a dress code down at Joanie and Mark's bar.

Snagging her phone, she lets her fingers fly over the keys. When she's done, the message reads:

_Going to Wine Cellar. Come buy me a birthday shot._

She stares at it for a minute and then, resigned, sends the message to every guy she knows and, so she doesn't look like too big of a slut, a few of her female friends too.

She hopes that by the time she stumbles home, she's fucked in every sense of the word - too fucked to remember that she ever met the famous, charming, infuriatingly beautiful movie star Tate Langdon.

If Violet hadn't been so upset, she would have watched the video more closely. If she had maybe talked to him since he left or if his co-star hadn't been so gorgeous, maybe she wouldn't have been so angry - angry enough to slam the screen closed the second Tate had wound his arm around his beautiful co-star's shoulder.

If things were different, if she hadn't been living in a house that magnifies your worst fears and feeds on your self doubt, then she would have watched the video for just five seconds longer and she would have seen it.

When Tate had drawn his co-star into a brotherly hug, the underside of his hand had flashed in view of the camera for a brief moment.

If things would have been different, she would have seen the heart, complete with an exaggerated V with a teeny-tiny H in the middle, permanently tattooed into his palm.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for reading!

Only one chapter left. Again, Paige and I would like to thank you all for being so wonderful throughout this entire fic. You're too good to us!

Uno mas!


	12. Chapter 12

_"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."_

_-Oscar Wilde_

* * *

><p>"When in reality, European justifications for imperialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East were largely based in racist attitudes and assumptions..."<p>

Violet Harmon rolls her eyes and slumps back against the hard plastic of her chair. Of course, she's got the _one_ fucking teacher in the entire school that uses the last day of class to teach. All over the building, students were tearing into cupcakes at class parties and writing missives in yearbooks while Violet sits caged in a sweltering senior European History seminar, listening to someone old enough to have actually lived through the "Scramble for Africa" ramble on.

"The promise of infrastructure for poverty driven regions was not worth the loss of culture of indigenous peoples of the African continent..."

She stifles a yawn and shifts, inconspicuously trying to wake her sleeping ass cheek. It's murder being cooped inside on a day like this, but if she's honest with herself, she might as well be sitting here listening to Professor Age Spot's death rattle. She wouldn't know what to write in someone's yearbook if she had the chance. _Hey, it was great not knowing you. Sorry I ignored you all year, it's just that your fake tits and bullshit L.A. attitude make me want to puke._ _xoxo! _Her eyes cut up to the clock at the front of the room. Just under ten minutes left and she'll finally be able to leave this hellhole for good. The east coast is calling her name, her home, a place where shit made sense and she wouldn't be caught up in the poisonous lives of Hollywood trash. Goodbye California, hello NYU.

It's been a little over three weeks since the worst birthday of Violet's young life. She'd made it to the Wine Cellar successfully but her plan to fuck her troubles away had gotten derailed around her eighth shot of whiskey. She'd woken up on Mark and Joanie's couch with her head half buried in a bucket of her own vomit. In truth, she's glad. Fucking some other pretty boy wasn't going to make her feel better. It wouldn't make her forget _him._

She never says his name aloud.

She tries not to think it, either.

But every night, like clockwork, Tate Langdon creeps into her thoughts. There have been a slew of new interviews, but she won't let herself watch them. It hurts too much to hear his voice and see his smile. From the headlines she can't avoid, the ones that stare her in the face at the grocery store, she knows that filming of his major motion picture wrapped two days ago. He's due home any day now. She can picture him arriving at the airport, skin sun-kissed from a spring in the south of France, signing autographs with the leggy blonde superstar sidled up under his arm...

Stop, she thinks. Stop it right now. Fuck him. He's not worth it.

She shakes him out of her head and checks the clock. Three minutes and counting.

She knows that she has absolutely no chance at getting over him in L.A.. If she stays, she'll always be waiting for him to pop up at the Wine Cellar, or at the fucking mall, or at his bedroom window while she's staring into it. She can't spend her life like this, killing herself with thoughts of what might have been.

Life's too fucking short. She's not that kind of girl. She won't _be _that kind of girl.

She's not her mother, and she refuses to follow in her footsteps.

She sent in her acceptance to NYU two weeks ago. Her dad had already mailed the first check. New York would be good for her, a fresh start. She'd get the chance to meet people that didn't spend their entire lives pretending to be someone they weren't. She'd be learning new things, meeting new friends - fuck, maybe even meeting a new guy. Someone that she could fall in love with, someone that would really love her back. Someone that would make her forget the ache that's set up permanent residence within her sternum.

Not a minute later, the bell rings and the class goes crazy, springing from desks and practically sprinting for the door. She follows at a more leisurely pace, she's in no hurry to make her escape. The rest of her fellow graduating seniors at her posh L.A. high school are rushing home to receive their Range Rovers topped with gigantic bows or to graduation festivities complete with designer drug party favors. Violet doesn't want any of that shit, she told her parents that she wouldn't need a car in New York and that if they threw her a party she wouldn't come. No, Violet's only celebration of the end of four years in hell will be too many shots at the Wine Cellar and, hopefully, a slice of pizza from the the joint on the corner before she passes out.

It suddenly hits her.

She's a graduate. Her high school career is over. And in spite of how miserable she is, she can't help but smile. She's _free._ No more seven hour days, no more awkward small talk in cramped hallways, no more locker combinations. Independence, her own apartment, a brand new life is waiting for her just three short months away.

In the glow of knowing she never has to come back to this place, nothing seems quite so dire. For the first time in weeks, months even, Violet's got hope again. It's like taking a deep breath of fresh air. It fills her, chases away some of the darkness that's been weighing her down lately and sends tingles forking down her limbs and up her spine.

Feeling empowered by the idea that this angst is all temporary, feeling like herself again, Violet reaches into her bag and tugs out her favorite sunglasses, heart-shaped and fire engine red. They sit on her face like a superhero's mask, with them she's invincible.

Not even Tate fucking Langdon can touch her mood.

The halls are crowded with teary goodbyes and fist bumps, but they're nothing more than a fading mirage. These people mean jack shit to her. And once she's out those doors, she'll never see them again. She walks with a bounce in her step, with a victory cigarette in one hand and a handy-dandy lighter in the other.

Summer is waiting just outside, sunscreen and popsicles, studded bikinis and the sparkling ocean.

Life is hers for the taking.

Violet's halfway to stable, popping open her Zippo to light up, when she steps over the threshold out into the sunlight and her heart shatters, all over again.

Parked right out front, at the bottom of the stairs, is a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS. She's hardly a car person, but she'd know that car anywhere, it's the same one that Wooderson drove in her all-time favorite movie, _Dazed and Confused_. It's the car she always said she'd buy if she ever had the money.

It's fucking gorgeous.

But it's not the car that has her heart doing jumping jacks and cart wheels, and double somersaults too.

It's the guy leant back against the hood in a pair of black Wayfarers.

He's got a head of wild curls, blonde and thick, that the wind pushes into his face, warm and humid today. With long legs, worn through chuck taylors strapped to each foot, and a plaid button-down pushed up to his elbows, he looks so much like _him _it makes her want to cry. And judging by the way people are stopping and staring, she's not the only one that spots the resemblance.

There's a cigarette eating itself between his fingers, the same brand as hers.

Her eyes fill with tears. Jesus, why the fuck did she have to see this guy _today, _of all days? It's not fucking fair. He looks so much like him.

Too much like him.

In fact... it can't be.

Can it?

She's ten feet away now, unaware that she hadn't been rooted to the concrete. Her cigarette twin is looking right at her, a hopeful and expectant smile on his lips.

Her chest constricts. She can't breathe. There's no oxygen in the air.

"Tate?"

* * *

><p>France is beautiful. It's like nowhere he's ever been. It reminds him of something out of a fairy tale, quaint villages and pubs that serve lager in flagons and crumbling ruins of an all but forgotten era.<p>

He loves the food and the people. Everything, really. It's a dream. Or it would be if Violet was here with him. Fortunately, his project is a great distraction. When he's not on set, he's out with the cast and crew, discovering new places to eat and hole-in-the-wall bars that remind him of the Wine Cellar.

His co-stars are great. Everybody is generally very easy going off set. They work hard to play hard. When they're not out rubbing shoulders with the locals at dingy pubs, they're back in their hotel with the stereo on and beer pong set up in the kitchen. He knows it's a little egotistical but he finally feels like he's made it. These are serious fucking actors, guys that have been in movies he's seen a hundred times, and they're treating him with respect. They make him feel like he belongs in the club, a Hollywood power player in the making.

Tate's found perhaps his greatest companion in Jennifer, the lead opposite him. She's wild and loveable. They've wasted reels of film dissolving into giggles every other take. In the morning they'll jam to Muse in makeup and at night they'll hang out on his room's balcony, smoking pot and munching on carrots or whatever the fuck Jen's handlers let her eat.

He knows how it all must look on camera, during interviews. They're always so close, comfortable around one another. Banter flows between them, smiles too. But everybody's got it wrong. Sure, Tate's drawn to Jen in part because she reminds him of Violet, her spirit and her vigor, but honestly, she doesn't compare. And it works out great, because she's got a ball and chain too, a boy back in London. They haven't gone public yet, but by the way she talks about him, he knows it's the real deal, just like him and Violet.

Violet.

He misses her more with each passing day, her voice, her laugh, even that mean little smile she gets when he's pissed her off. He wants to call, write, _something_, but it's just so fucking risky. If anything's intercepted by her mom or dad, they're fucked. And he can't chance it. She's too goddamn important.

Late at night, when Jen's passed out on the couch and he's retired to his bedroom, he'll wonder if his want for Violet is just some fad, if he might wake up one day and not care anymore.

It scares him, how little time he's had with her. Solid relationships aren't built on a three day weekend, he knows that. They take time. But this thing he's got for Violet, it isn't logical. He can't explain it.

He stays busy, surrounds himself with good people, and doesn't shy away from a night out, but not once does he find himself craving one of the pretty young director's assistants or a Parisian barfly. Thoughts of Violet are what surface first in the morning and what surround him as he sinks into sleep each night. He's got it bad.

At some point late in the second month, when they're spending long days on tough scenes, Tate returns to his room physically hurting, he misses her so much. He very nearly calls his mother to demand she cross the street and hand Violet her phone. He tosses his phone from hand to hand, anxious, but in the end he stays strong. Admitting something like this to Constance would be a disaster. She'd get nosy, want to be involved, and probably end up scaring the poor girl off for good.

Instead he calls Moira.

"Text me the web address for one Violet Harmon's facebook," he all but snaps into the phone, shaking like a man without his drugs.

Moira makes a sound on the other end of the line, a disappointed, knowing sound, the kind your mom would make if you'd asked to spend the night at a "friend's" after prom, fully aware that you were just trying to get laid.

He prepares himself for twenty questions and a lecture, but after thirty seconds of dead air, she simply sighs into the receiver.

"Alright, it's in your inbox."

Tate has to stop himself from hanging up on her then, so anxious for a look at that heart-shaped face. He doesn't, knows he can't, chants a string of, "Thank you, thank you"s into the line and waits for a begrudged, "You're welcome," before ending the call. Then he can't get to his email fast enough.

A minute of middle-of-the-room pacing later and he's looking at a tiny picture of Violet laughing. Her profile is private so he can't see more than that precious square, but just the simple sight of her sends him spinning, soaring, climbing up, up, up into the clouds.

"You're mine," he says quietly to the glowing screen of his iPhone, sounding like a madman. He doesn't care. This girl, this perfect girl with brown eyes the size of quarters and a smile saved just for him, is waiting back in L.A. At least he hopes she is. His stomach bottoms out at the idea that she's lost faith in them during his absence, but he steers his thoughts away from that idea immediately. He can't handle thinking that right now. He's barely getting on as it is. Thinking their future might be threatened by this time spent apart kills him.

He shelves the notion and turns back to his phone, taking in how beautifully her face lights up with a laugh. Just the sight of her smile puts a dopey grin on his face. He lets that warm, fuzzy puppy-love feeling blanket him for a moment and kisses the photo before bookmarking the address and clicking off the screen. Feeling ridiculous, because that's what she does to him, drives him completely bonkers, he kisses his own palm too, right over the faded V that she drew weeks and weeks earlier. That's when the idea's born.

An hour later her drawing isn't a drawing at all, but a tattoo, black lines with angry red edges staring Jen in the face for a high-five that he regrets immediately, cursing and holding his hand against his chest, and she finds it hilarious.

Shoehorned into attending the premiere of another film by their production company weeks later, Tate deliberately turns his hand into the camera of a faceless interviewer in hopes that his tattoo might briefly flash the lens. He knows his Violet isn't the type to troll Hollywood gossip blogs, but he hopes that somehow she sees it and knows that he's as much hers as she is his.

The rest of filming isn't so hard. He knows that palm tattoos fade, that he won't have it forever, but it will be there until Violet can trace it with her own fingers. It will slowly disappear from the friction of holding her hand. It will be his sanity until his plane arrives at LAX.

* * *

><p>Five weeks later, he's got a horrible case of jet lag and a car supplied by his production company, and he's on his way to pick up Violet after her very last day of school. Getting Moira to look up the track schedule for Westfield High had been a bitch, but with all of his good press lately, she's not going to let him want for anything.<p>

"Repeat after me: I am going to pick up a girl from her high school," Moira deadpans into the phone, but there's humor in her voice.

"Oh fuck off," Tate huffs fondly, and hangs up on her.

He can't get to Violet fast enough. Every red light is an asshole and every stop sign is just a quiet suggestion. His hands are fused to the wheel, her tattoo wrapped over embroidered leather.

_What if she's moved on_, that dark side of him wonders. It makes Tate bite down on the inside of his cheek. She hasn't, she hasn't, he assures himself, pressing his foot through the gas pedal as another red fucking light blinks green.

There are flowers from the airport in the passenger seat for her, along with another gift for later in his bag, but he knows they're not enough. He missed her birthday. There was nothing he could do from six thousand miles away, but he still hates himself for it. And now he's missed graduation too.

Gloom and doom settles into the car with him even though the windows are down, but then he's turning onto the street of his old high school, her high school now, and his heart is in his throat.

He thanks his lucky stars because there's a parking spot out front. It's a loading and unloading only zone, but he doesn't get a fuck. He slides in and cuts the engine. It's borderline pathetic how quick he's out of the car, whipping around the other side to wait for her.

At first there's no one. The doors are closed and there are goddamn tumbleweeds rolling by. He watches those doors like God himself might step through them at any minute, and, well, that was pretty much right on.

Anxious, he fidgets for a cigarette with shaking hands, can't steady his grip and nearly drops his lighter. Cursing quietly to himself, he gets a flame on the third try and is pulling poison calm into his lungs seconds later.

The bell rings.

Kids pour out those doors. And Tate tries to see them all, but there's just too many. So he waits, and sucks on his cigarette like its candy, because it's the only thing keeping him sane right now.

People flood past him and out into the parking lot, chomping at the bit for summer. Some turn and look at him, but no one stares outright. He doesn't care. They aren't _her._

The herd starts to thin and Tate's mood dips.

_Maybe I'm too late_, he thinks sadly, turning to look at the backs of heads ducking into cars and driving off. There were so many of them and she's so small, she could have easily slipped past his radar.

A minute later, he resolves that he's missed her and decides to try again at her house after he finishes his cigarette.

That's when he sees her.

The seas part and she trots down the front steps, oblivious, with those huge fucking heart-shaped glasses he'd seen her wearing what feels like eons ago.

His heart might just rocket out of his chest and into the next county, he isn't sure, but honestly, right now he doesn't care. He can't risk tearing his eyes off of her to decipher whether or not he's still whole. She might just up and disappear.

A grey patterned dress clings to her in the breeze. Beneath it she's got on a pair of midnight blue tights and brown mary janes, his perfect little Fuck You princess.

At last, her eyes find him, but she doesn't react, just draws in a little breath and continues dropping down the steps, one by one. He wants to wave, but something in her puzzled expression stops him.

A crease slowly forms between her brows. She's staring at him in desperate disbelief. It prompts him to spin back to see what it is that's got her worried. Something isnt right.

When his eyes land on her again, she's closer, just a few yards off. His heart - good, it's still in there after all- does a loop-de-loop and he drops his cigarette into the gutter.

"Tate?"

His name on her lips, it's like something from a dream. In that moment, those three long months without her just vanish, that ache is gone. The simple sound of her voice has cured him.

He's a complete mess inside, but somehow he manages to nod and smile from behind his sunglasses.

The next moment Violet is in his arms.

She doesn't so much wrap herself around him, as much as she folds into him, nuzzling into his chest and breathing him in. The sharp edges of her sunglasses prod at him, but he doesn't fucking care, he'd take all the pain in the world for the pleasure of having her back.

Eyes closed, they sway quietly in the hot breeze, entirely unaware of anything outside themselves, taking time to let one another soak back into their skin.

Feeling like he could fly, Tate leans to rest his chin against the top of Violet's head, wanting to cage her in and protect her from anything and everything that could ever attempt to take her from him again. He'll never be without her, he decides with her collected against his chest; any closer and they'd fuse right together. From now on where he goes, she goes. He hadn't realized just how much the time apart had weighed on him until it was over, like a throb that you don't notice until you finally see the bruise.

When she finally pulls away, as far as he'll let her, he's disappointed to see that she's not mirroring his own dopey puppy-love expression. Instead, her face is contorted in fury. In a heartbeat, the pain of her sunglasses point is replaced by the dull ache of her little fists beating against his chest.

"You - fucking - bastard!" she cries, punching him with what is clearly all the strength she has. "You didn't _call, _you didn't _write, _I thought you fucking _forgot_ about me, you _selfish _prick!"

He's too shocked to do more than let her hurt him until the sight of tears sliding under the hearts on her face pulls him out of his stupor. "Violet, what the fuck?" he says dumbly, catching her wrists and easily pinning them in the air between them.

Her glare is defiant. "Did somebody else die?" she seethes. "Have to come home for another funeral? Have to bury one of mommy dearest's relatives and thought you'd use the girl who's hopelessly in love with you as another fuck toy for the weekend to help you get through your grief?"

"You're in love with me?" he asks hopefully, rubbing his thumbs against her wrists. It hurts that she could possibly think he was using her, but Jesus Christ, she's in love with him!

"Yeah, and what a fucking _joke,_" she spits. "God, how long did it take you to start screwing your co-star? I hope she knows that she may be a fucking movie star but all she got were the sloppy seconds of a high school nobody."

He's confused again. "Do you mean Jen?" he asks, brow wrinkling. "I didn't fuck Jen." And then, in an instant, his confusion is replaced by fear. If she thinks he was out screwing someone else, did she try to move on? The thought of someone else's hands on her makes him nauseous.

"Yeah. Right," she scoffs, his favorite mean smirk darkening her face. "I saw the interviews, Tate. You two couldn't keep your hands off of each other."

He swallows nervously. "Violet, I didn't have sex with her, I _swear,_" he insists empathetically. "We're _friends_. Honest. She's got a boyfriend back in London that she's crazy about, and I'm fucking _wild _about you. I promise."

Her face softens for a moment before regaining it's steely expression. "Then why didn't you write?" she asks savagely. "I mean, I get that we didn't trade numbers but I didn't hear from you for three fucking months." Her head dips a moment and over the top of her glasses he can see the fresh shine of tears in her eyes. "You didn't even acknowledge my birthday," she seethes at his toes.

The thought that he could have made Violet sad even for a moment was painful before. The knowledge that he _did _hurt her for a three month stretch - not to mention making her cry, _again,_ on what should be one of the happiest days of her life - is unbearable. "I couldn't," he protests feebly, wincing at how much it sounds like bullshit even coming from his own lips. "Violet, if your parents would have found out, it would have been over for us. I never would have seen you again," he says brokenly. "I care about you too much to let that happen."

"Bullshit," she spits. "All you care about is your precious _career."_

_Now_ he's mad. He spins her around and pushes her back up against the car, caging her in with his body to prevent her from running - because he can tell by the look in her eyes she's about three seconds from bolting away from him and out of his life. He leans forward to bring his face level with hers. He can feel her breath hot against his cheeks. "I don't give a shit about my career," he growls. "I mean, I love my job, but I'd throw it all away for you. I almost _did_ throw it all away for you. You're the one that told me I had to go, remember?"

She turns her head away petulantly, her lower lip stuck out in a pout that he wants to bite. He adjusts and turns so that she can't avoid his eyes. He needs to be sure that she understands. "I risked everything for you," he says darkly. "And I'm not talking about some fucking movie, I'm talking about my freedom. I'd be serving a nickel to a dime right now if somebody would have found out. You may not give a shit that I'm twice your age, but I guarantee that your parents would have. Do you understand?"

She continues to stare resolutely ahead but he can see the slight softening of her facial features and he knows that he's getting through to her, even though she doesn't want him to. His tone softens to match her expression. "I thought about you every fucking day," he promises, praying she can hear the sincerity in his voice. "I wanted to write, or to call... one day I almost called _Constance, _of all fucking people, to have her get you just so I could hear your voice. That's how desperate I was. That's how much I missed you."

She huffs out a laugh and leans back against the car. Gambling that she won't run, he smiles and releases her wrists, reaching up to the red plastic hearts slipping down her nose. "I want to see your face," he says firmly, hands moving to slide the sunglasses out from her hair. The second he's got them off and folded up, hanging from the collar of his shirt, her eyes widen almost comically and her fingers fly to his wrist, grabbing for his hand and turning it over so she can see his palm.

The light in her eyes at his tattooed devotion erases the sting of her doubt. She runs the pad of her finger over the heart, pausing at the tiny H tucked between the wings of the V. When she looks up, her eyes are glossy with fresh tears, but this time her lips are curved into a smile. "This is permanent," she breathes, thumb moving in small circles over her mark. "You can't just wash this off."

"_You're_ permanent," he says fiercely, his free hand dropping to her hip to tug her closer. "I love you, Violet."

And now, now that he's admitted it to her and said it out loud, he finally feels like everything's right between them. She can feel it too, he can tell by the way she melts into his touch. "I love you," he confesses again, head dipping low. He's desperate to kiss her but before he does, he has to know. He has to be sure...

"Did you wait for me?" he whispers hopefully, arms winding possessively around her waist.

She looks up at him with doe eyes. "I was so mad at you," she says in a faraway voice. His breathing speeds and he feels like he might pass out, but then she stands on her tiptoes, reaching until her face is inches away from his own. "But I couldn't do it."

His heart soars, and then she's whispering his undoing into the secret space between their mouths, "I'm yours, Tate. I love you, too."

* * *

><p>The ride back to their neighborhood is all hand holds and smiles. With Beastie Boys blowing up the speakers, Violet's got her head on Tate's thigh and her bare feet out the window. The car's filled with fresh air, but they're breathing summer and love.<p>

"So what'd you do for kicks while I was gone?" With one hand on the wheel, the other is free to card through Violet's hair, tiny tangles catching and falling away between his fingers.

Violet shrugs as well as she can laying down, and snatches back her sunglasses from where they're hanging from Tate's collar. "Nothing really. School, the Wine Cellar, a whole lot of internet stalking." She doesn't sound embarrassed in the least, and why should she? When the only place you can see your boy's face is in tabloids or on gossip blogs, you make due.

He laughs to cover what he's really feeling; guilt. He knows how those interviews tore at her.

"Read anything good?" He teases rather than starting them back down the road to another argument. In those big red sunglasses, he can't see her eyes, but somehow, he knows she's looking at him, can feel the warmth of her gaze against the underside of his chin as he turns off of a main street and into the suburbs.

He hasn't given much thought to anything past getting Violet back into his arms, but now as they're nearing the house, he's wondering what's next. Will she invite him in for dinner to meet her folks? Are they going to break the news to everyone? Is Moira going to want him to schedule an interview concerning his new partner? And where will they live? Is it too early to ask her to pack her bags, even when he knows they both want this? And what about college? Is she going, where?

He's bowled over by these questions and more, but before he can sort them out, Violet's turning onto her side and pressing her face against his navel.

"No more small talk," she mumbles into his shirt, dropping her flowers onto the backseat. "All this graduating and confessing my undying love for you business is exhausting. Nap time."

Tate feels more than sees her cheeky grin, but lets them drift into an easy silence. Her fingers skirt around the waistband of his jeans, more calming than anything, but already he can feel his body responding to her nearness. Three months of celibacy hasn't been a walk in the park by any means.

Fifteen minutes later, thumbs tapping the steering wheel, Tate's pulling up to Violet's house. There are trickles of people along the sidewalks, mowing the grass or walking dogs, taking in the sunny afternoon. His girl looks asleep in his lap, fingers curled loosely into the front of his shirt, but when he veers towards the curb to park, she pops up like some goddamn jack-in-the-box and grabs the wheel.

"Not yet," she says, and where she was drowsy before, she's grinning like a supervillain.

"Jesus, woman! You're going to kill me." Tate's clutching at his chest and slapping at her hands, but all that does is encourage her to slink into his lap and commandeer the wheel.

It's like something out of a fucking Charlie Chaplin movie. Violet tells Tate to work the gas and that she'll handle the steering. He decides that they're going to crash and die horribly, or worse, smash up this on-loan car, but it's literally impossible to say no to her - he's tried. So with courage in the form of a cigarette between his lips, Tate lets Violet guide them back onto the main road and up a few blocks, and if he covers his eyes more than once, it's completely understandable.

"What the fuck is this place?" He asks from behind his fingers when the car stops. They're idling in an empty backlot behind some run down building with jagged shards for windows. Weeds have sprouted in every crack, it looked entirely abandoned. And really fucking shady.

Violet pulls away his hands to show him her smile and kicks the car into park. "Cut the engine," she's saying, but he's still eyeing their surroundings with suspicion.

Impatient, she yanks out the keys and, tossing them into the passenger seat, spins to straddle Tate with the grace only a tiny wisp of a girl like her could have in a car like this.

Her thighs bookend his hips easily, and if the seat buckle poking at her knee is a bother, she doesn't seem to mind. She's smiling that hungry smile, like she wants to devour him whole, and when she speaks, it's more purr than anything else.

"How was I supposed to give you a proper hello right out front of my house?"

He's ready to respond but doesn't get the chance, all the blood in his brain that allows him to think is being pulled to his dick at the sudden feel of her little hands undoing the button fly of his jeans.

Today, it seems, is not about teasing. It's been hell for both of him, and maybe she's just finally snapped. "Violet," he whines as her fingers sink immediately into the gap to wrap around his cock. At this rate, they'll tumble into insanity together.

"Yes?" she asks cheekly, smirking up at him from behind those heart-shaped glasses.

"You really are going to kill me," he breathes and his head drops back against the leather seat as she strokes him to full hardness, rocking gently in his lap.

"I wouldn't do that," she murmurs, sweetness dripping from every word. "I'd never hurt you. I love you, remember?"

His heart does a backflip. "Say it again." Parts of him still can't believe that it's real, any of this. Even the familiar weight of her and her busy fingers feel surreal.

Shaking the sunglasses from her face, Violet fumbles for the lever that lays back the chair. When it's halfway back, she folds to loom over her boy, flushed and breathing hard, and captures his mouth in a lingering kiss.

"I love you," she whispers into his lips, her spare hand crawling up the side of Tate's neck to comb into his hair. "I love you, I love you, I love you..."

He tugs her hands out of his boxers then, because the combination of her hands on his dick and her whispered I love you's has him ready to blow in his pants, and unshutters his eyes. "I fucking love _you_," he says forcefully, his voice little more than a rough whisper, and reaches between her spread thighs to cup her sex. The dampness and heat wedged against his fingers has his mouth watering.

"Christ," he hisses, and she ruts against his hand, pushes her hips in little circles until they've got a lazy rhythm going.

He's contemplating the logistics of working her out of her leggings and panties when she reads his mind. "Fucking rip them."

He groans because he can't fucking help it and curls his fingers into the seam at her crotch, spearing through the flimsy material with his thumb and shredding the cotton one tug. They're frantic after that, hands working between their bodies in a flurry of shaking fingers, his pushing her soaking panties to the side and hers pulling his already weeping cock free from his boxers.

There's so many things running through his mind, things he knows they should discuss - but then she's pushing up on her knees, with both forearms flat against the ceiling, to line up their bodies, and sinks down onto his cock in exquisite slowness. Her insides, hot and tight, pulse around him as he's sheathed within her body's embrace. Being back here, locked into one another again, it strangles any lingering coherent thought, leaving Tate helpless to another "I love you" wrung from his throat as their pelvises meld together.

All of the agony of their three month exile disappears in the wake of her fluid movements. Violet wastes no time in setting the pace, her hands pressed up against the ceiling, body rolling down to meet each of Tate's thrusts.

"You feel so fucking good," he sighs, placing two steadying hands on her hips, careful not to grip her too possessively, wanting to slip inside her skin, never close enough. He rocks upward in the hopes of coaxing one of her breathy sighs and is not found wanting. Brows pinched in pleasure, Violet's lips fall open into a tiny 'O' just before her head droops forward to rest against his sternum.

Three months without her and he's aching for release already, but he wants to feel the quake of her orgasm around him as much as he's desperate for his own, more. Grinding into him with blissful abandon, Violet blindly scrabbles at the buttons of his flannel, wanting to feel more. Her hands splay greedily up his front when the heavy fabric peels open at last, fingernails hooking into the ledge of his clavicles, tongue and teeth worrying at the web of muscle between neck and shoulder.

They're both breathing hard and sweating, cramped in more ways than one, but it's nirvana. The world just melts away, school, jobs, everything. Moving together, their bodies swelling like the tide, it's what love looks like, two people bound to the earth not by gravity, but by each other.

Closer and closer, Tate worms a hand between their bodies to gently stroke at Violet's warm, swollen clit, begging her to join him over the edge. "Oh fuck, Tate, _Tate,_" she hisses, arching backwards, strung out. Her spine curves like a strung bow and the angle puts her breasts in perfect allignment with his mouth. Tate makes a sound not unlike a whimper and curls inward to lave at her skin, pulling a budded pink nipple in between his teeth.

The prettiest sounds are spilling from her lips, interrupted only by flithier words, and Tate can't fucking take it. He's going to cum and she isn't there yet. To quiet her, he hooks his thumb into her mouth, but she works her tongue around it in obscene circles, leaving him in no better place.

"Fuck, Violet, I'm so fucking close," he grates out, and she kisses his palm, right over his tattoo, and nods without opening her eyes.

"Me too, me too," she's whispering, but he can see that she's not here with him anymore, and just like that, an instant later, she's choking out a half sob and clenching at him wildly.

He joins her moments later, coming apart with a feral growl, hips snapping up until he's spent and they're both sagging back into themselves with loopy smiles and heavy eyes.

* * *

><p>They lie like that for a small forever, her sweaty chest pressed into him as runs his fingers over the long line of her back, tracing each vertebra. "That was incredible," she mumbles from the skin of his neck, and he feels each syllable.<p>

Even though she can't see his face, he's grinning. "You have no idea how much I missed you," he says in that sleepy voice boys get after sex, pressing a kiss into her hair.

"I think you just showed me," she giggles, and it's such an uncharacteristic sound coming from his ballsy little princess he can't help but chuckle along with her.

"Well, that was nothing," he laughs. "Wait until I get you in an actual bed, you know, with a mattress and sheets, pillows, the whole shebang." He maps out the waistband of her tights. "Think your parents will notice if you don't come home tonight?"

"I don't give a shit if they do or not," He can practically hear her rolling her eyes. "It's my graduation, and the only present I want is a night of fucking my long lost boyfriend. Although," she revises, leaning back slightly to eat him up with her smile. "I'm not down with staying at Mommy Dearest's house. You're gonna have to spend some of that "fuck you money" and take me to an actual hotel."

He laughs and pulls her back against him, breathing in a lungful of the sweat and sex that hangs heavy in the car. He considers cracking a window, but decides against it. "No, I thought I'd take you to my apartment in Malibu," he says. "It's nice. You'd like it."

"Sounds good," she yawns, nuzzling under his jaw.

His heart speeds up and he feels a flush color his cheeks. Fuck, he's nervous. She makes him feel like a fucking teenager again. "In fact," he says carefully a moment later, gently resuming his soft stroking of her spine, "if you really like it, maybe you could live there."

He feels her tense beneath him and he panics. He's pushed her too far, it's too fucking soon. "Shit, I'm sorry," he mumbles, bringing a hand up to rub wearily at his eyes. "I shouldn't have fucking asked, I know it's too soon..."

"No, it's not that," she says, leaning up to gaze at him, lip bitten between her teeth. "I'd love to live with you. It sounds kind of amazing, actually, it's just..." her chin dips and she turns her eyes to peer out the window, anywhere but into his face. It's not a good sign. "I didn't think you were going to come back to me," she says on an exhale. She takes a deep breath and looks up at him guiltily. "Tate. I'm going to NYU."

He has to bite into his tongue to keep any emotion from bleeding into his features.

Fuck.

He should have found a way to get a hold of her. Called, written, _something_ so that she wouldn't have felt like she needed to do this, to run away to the other side of the fucking country. He's finally got her back and he's going to lose her all over again.

No. Fuck that. He _can't_ lose her.

And then it occurs to him that maybe he doesn't have to.

He's got an apartment in New York. A loft, a huge one, that he'd idealistically bought a couple years ago and debated selling a hundred times since. He'd never gotten rid of the place because every time he came close to putting it on the market, some nagging voice in the back of his head had told him to keep it, just for a little while longer.

Now he knows. He was waiting for Violet. He's not surprised. He's been waiting for her his entire life, this is just another piece of the puzzle falling into place.

And the more he thinks about it, the more it sounds like a great idea. Every Hollywood wannabe lives in L.A. Real actors - actors that don't need to show up in the pages of US weekly to get a role - live in New York. Kevin Spacey. Peter Sarsgaard. Woody fucking Allen, for Christ's sake. If he moved to New York City, it could be really, really good for his career. It would be surprising and inspired and show that he takes his career seriously. Hell, maybe Moira could get him into some off-broadway shit. Lately, it seems anybody who's _anybody _is doing a run on the stage. He'd get a ton of great press and it would definitely help his Oscar campaign.

Violet finally pulls her head up to find him grinning like an idiot. "What?" she asks her brow wrinkling in confusion.

"I have a loft in New York," he says carefully, excitement seeping slowly into his words.

Her lips curve into a small smile. Her fingers curl into the open collar of his shirt. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I am," he says. "And it's not far from NYU, actually. I mean, if you want to live in the dorms, I understand. I don't want you to miss out on t_he college experience _-"

"Um, showering in a communal bathroom and sharing a tiny room with some random cunt, or staying in your swanky pad and having sex for dessert every night?" She asks mockingly. There is no hesitancy in her answer. She speaks with wholehearted conviction. "Are you fucking kidding me? _Of course _I'll live with you! But what about your career?"

Tate waves a flippant hand at the question. "Doesn't matter, tons of celebrities live in the city," he rationalizes. "I'd follow you anywhere, Violet," he gestures to the crusty place they're parked in back of, "Obviously."

She follows his hand with her eyes, looks out at where they just had sex, like fucking homeless people or something, and when she turns back to his face again, he's smiling a smile that breeds butterflies sized like bats in her tummy.

She's the luckiest girl in the world, and they're moving in together, and this gorgeous fucking car is parked back where drug deals go bad and hookers get whacked, and suddenly everything is hilarious.

She dissolves into laughter, and it must be contagious, because so does he. Their bellies shake and there are tears in their eyes. She pounds at his chest for him to stop, but all he can do is hold his breath with zipped lips, and then they're cracking up all over again.

What's so funny is that happy endings were never their style. They were built for heartache, two broken things, made that way.

And yet here they are.

They laugh back into some semblance of decency and all the way home, where Violet jets inside to pack an overnight bag and Tate waits at the curb. When she shoots back into the passenger seat with a backpack slung over a shoulder, he's handing over her heart-shaped glasses and she's gifting him a kiss. He goes for the radio, but she's too fast, jamming a mixed tape into the slot and cranking the volume until the mirrors shake.

Sex And Violence fills the sunset air and as Tate pulls out onto the road, with Violet's fingers tapping the beat into his thigh, he wonders if this is really possible. It all feels like some fucking fantasy. She's too perfect, too _good_, to actually be his. He simply doesn't deserve her. And even if she is his, for now, he knows that happiness is never permanent. His parents had loved each other once, and so had hers. How long can their happily ever after last?

Soon the Scissor Sisters are fading out and, in their pace, the strums of the Rolling Stones swell, Mick Jagger crooning that time is on his, and all at once, Tate has his answer.

Forever.

They're forever.

"Nice choice," he smirks at her, because if he doesn't laugh he'll cry. He's that fucking in love with her. He's in awe.

"It's our song," she says with a shrug, and he's grateful for the Wayfarers that hide the shine of tears in his eyes.

It only takes a few measures before Violet is singing into the wind, one hand out the window to feel it push against her palm. Tate steals a glance at his girl and sighs, feeling light and free in a way he's never been. The feeling's got a name, an identity, but just as he thinks he's going to catch it, Violet whirls around in a blur of blonde and smacks him on the cheek with her lips, sending any and all thoughts skittering.

"Did I mention you were going to be the death of me?" he says, and then they're laughing all over again.

* * *

><p><span>Epilogue<span>

August is sweltering in New York. The whole city feels sticky, lazy, a million people wanting nothing more than to waste the day flopped over an air conditioner. It's the worst time in the world to move, but timing has never quite been on their side.

"I think this is the last of it," Tate grunts, dropping a box just inside the door of their new loft. He peels his t-shirt off, stuffing it into a back pocket, and turns to find Violet watching him from where she sits perched on the kitchen island, her feet swaying back and forth.

He smirks at catching her perving and puffs out his chest. "You see something you like?" he drawls, voice low and teasing.

"Fuck yeah I do," she beams, beckoning him forward with the crook of her finger. "You know, there are pornos that start out this way."

"When have you seen a porno?" he asks skeptically, walking past her and pulling a popsicle from a bag by the freezer.

"There's a lot you don't know about me," she says mischievously, and there's that glint in her eye. He scoffs and, scowling, she reaches out for his treat and makes grabby motions with her fingers. "Gimmie."

"Ah ah ah," he admonishes, stepping back. He peels the wax wrapper off and discards it in an empty bag. "Close your eyes."

Obediently, Violet's eyes shutter, her feet slowing their wobbling to a stop. A thrill bolts through him at how easily she obeys and he steps forward. Dragging aside the strap of her tank top, he presses the popsicle to her collarbone.

"Tate!" she squeals, but before she can shove him away he's sucking the juice from her skin, laving at it with lazy focus. Her hands, poised to push him away, drop to his biceps and grip tightly, bitten nails leaving little marks.

"More?" he purrs. She swallows and nods slowly. He runs the sweetened ice over the swell of her breast, and when she sucks in a sharp breath, he follows the track with his tongue, warmth chasing away the chill.

"If you keep that up, we're never going to make it to dinner," she growls, but there's no threat in her voice, only heat and wanting.

"Maybe I've changed my mind, maybe I'd like _you_ for dinner." He brings the popsicle to her lips and whispers, "Open up," and she does, eyes and mouth wide. She sucks at the popsicle in a way that can only be described as obscene, and when he tugs the treat from her mouth with a pop, her lips are stained a cherry red.

"We're really here," she whispers, and her mouth is curving up into his favorite smile. He can't help but taste it.

"Me and you."

When the popsicle's melted all over his fingers, their mouths busy, he tosses watever's left in the sink and reaches for her hand. He'd be content staying in the apartment, with her, but they have dinner plans. "Come on, Jen and Nick are gonna wonder where we are." He pulls her down from the counter. "Let's go"

"I don't wanna go _now_," she whines. "Getting me all turned on like that and then not delivering is just cruel, probably illegal."

Tate laughs. "Sooner we go, sooner we get back," he reasons, yanking her towards the door. She walks on stubborn legs like a petulant child, her hand a fighting fist in his own.

When he looks back she's sporting a dramatic snarl and he softens, turning to pull her in against his side with one arm and dropping his mouth to his ear. "Don't worry, we'll still be hungry for dessert." And the way he says it _should _be illegal. Her face lights up with a reluctant smile, and a moment later she's kissing him sweetly on the mouth, over and over, tiny pecks of affection.

"I fucking love you," she says with a sigh, defeated, and flounces out the front door.

Tate stays behind to slip back into his t-shirt and lock up, closes the door on their apartment before chasing after her.

Violet is waiting for him at the end of the hall, hand held against the door of the elevator to keep it open. She's smiling a popsicle-red smile from ear to ear, hair pulled back off her neck in a messy bun, perfection in a tiny tank top and shorts. And Tate realizes, feet carrying him closer and closer to the rest of his life, that for the first time in thirty-four years, he is home.

The End

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: **ScarlettWoman710: **I cannot find kind enough words to thank all of you for your support, reviews, messages, and for sticking with us as we wrote our "baby." It's been an incredible experience, made better by all of the love and feedback we got from you guys. And of course, a massive thank you to my amazing, stupendous, talented, wonderful co-author, OYB. I've learned SO much from you - writing with you has been a pleasure. Thanks so much guys!

**ohyellowbird: **This is it, the end! Thank you soso much for reading this story. It has been fantastic getting to see all of your reactions to it. To Paige, I love, love, love you! We have had a wonderful time writing this and have loved getting to share it with all of you! xx


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